Out of Control
by Knyle Borealis
Summary: Sherlock honestly doesn't have separation anxiety. It's just that there's a madman at large, and it doesn't seem terribly intelligent for John to be in Dublin on his own while Sherlock stays in London. There's no telling what could go wrong. Worse, with John so far away, Sherlock has no impact on what could happen to his best friend. Premonitions of SH/BAMF!JW, and twisted!JM
1. Separation

**A/N:**

**What's that you say? You're wondering why I'm here, publishing this completely out-of-the-blue story instead of continuing with my other one, Shadowman? Well, that makes two of us. But I literally woke up with this in my head today, and rather than bang my skull against a wall to get rid of it, I thought I'd write it down. **

**Don't worry, Shadowman is still going (if you were actually worried). I just felt an uncontrollable need to ramble...**

**Disclaimer-if you recognize it, it's not mine! (Including this disclaimer!)**

**Thank you for reading!**

**~Knyle B.**

* * *

Ding. D-ding.

Sherlock catalogued the sound of the flat's buzzer with a faint huff of annoyance. A client, undoubtedly: the timid ring suggested a tiring one. Without bothering to look up from the experiment on the kitchen table in front of him, the detective raised the volume of his sigh to audible levels and turned it into a call. "John. Door."

Silence answered. Unbothered, Sherlock plucked up his mobile and sent off a similarly informative text.

To: John W.

'_Doors don't open on their own_.'

Minutes passed by, but strangely, there was no immediate grumping or shuffling from any part of the flat to show that his message had been received. Instead, his phone pinged. His brow furrowing, Sherlock snatched it up in long, pale fingers and read the unhelpful display.

From: John W.

_'And it took you _how_ long to figure that out? Go and answer the door yourself, Sherlock.'_

Momentarily distracted from the view down his microscope, Sherlock set the phone aside and glanced up, running his silver eyes lightning-quick over his surroundings. Empty kitchen. Empty sitting room. No sound of activity in any other parts of the flat. John was decidedly absent. He scowled for a second, ordering his mind to explain the unforgivable situation.

To: John W.

_'You are not here.'_

Ping.

From: John W.

_'And you really are the world's greatest detective. You haven't answered that poor sod at the door yet, have you?'_

Sherlock frowned at the mobile, back in his pale grasp. The search for justification of John's absence had been ongoing through the texts, and it alerted him tersely that a result had been found. Sliding the phone to the side, Sherlock reviewed his findings. A faint snippet had been dredged up in response to his search. Cast off to a corner of his "To Be Sorted" room, the receiving center for all new information within his Mind Palace, it consisted of a conversation between John and himself the previous morning. He was pleased to discover that a brief mental picture had been logged with the event as well: him lounging on the sofa whilst his flatmate stood in the doorway, a lightly-packed suitcase in hand.

"It'll only be for four days, Sherlock," John had been saying, his tone at once exasperated and placating in response to the pout on Sherlock's face. "Dublin isn't that far. I'll be back the night the conference ends."

Sherlock's scowl turned into a grimace as the occurrence was at last slotted into its proper place within the usable regions of his databanks. John was not home because he hadn't been since the day before. He'd gone off to participate in some dull medical conference. In Dublin. For four whole days. Well, three now. Unless John had discounted the previous day of travel and had meant that the first had started that morning. It didn't matter, Sherlock decided. It was still an unconscionably long time for the smaller man to neglect his tea-making, deduction-appreciating, flatmate-following, and blogging duties.

It was also horribly unintelligent. Being in Dublin whilst Sherlock remained in London meant that John was alone. Hadn't the bombings in one of their previous cases taught him anything about precaution? He had already been kidnapped twice in the time that Sherlock had known him, both times by the criminal element and both times narrowly escaping an early grave. The Chinese had most certainly been nullified, thanks to several discrete tip-offs that had been made to a relatively minor chapter of the British government, but that only took one of the offending parties out of the way.

To: John W. _'Being a doctor is an excellent excuse to carry a knife, Dublin barmaids known to be over-friendly, and alleyways unfit for even homeless occupation. Take precautionary measures.'_

Sherlock had yet to track down and dismantle the second of his friend's captors, much to his vexation—and inner delight. Personal dichotomy aside, though, the facts still remained: A) Moriarty was still out there, and B) John was on his own.

_He_ was on his own, too.

Feeling a bit peeved about the unnecessary importance that his thoughts had attached to that last statement, Sherlock shoved ungraciously away from the table and stood, sweeping out of the room with his black coat in tow. Now that he had sorted out the correct information, he was disgusted to find that he didn't want it. Where could the feeble inclination to reject true data have come from? And what was the most expedient way for him to eradicate it?

Ping.

He stopped and detoured back to the kitchen table, grabbing his phone and pausing to read the contents of his new message rather than simply slipping it into his pocket.

From: John W.

_'Surgeons' conference and knives? Weird.'_

Ping.

From: John W.

_'Happen to know any barmaids in particular? And don't worry, I wouldn't go anywhere near an alleyway anyway. A comfortable room is generally more expected.'_

There was a moment of weakness allowed as Sherlock felt a small smile curve on his lips. Shaking his head at his flatmate's sarcastic humor, he typed back quickly.

To: John W.

_'Was referring to possible disguises for assassins and likely ambush sites. Idiot.'_

Ping.

From: John W.

_'Was trying to get world's smartest man to repeat the obvious. :-P Idiot: 1. Genius: 0.'_

Sherlock allowed himself a full two-second's worth of grin before another text came, its contents stifling his blossoming good will.

Ping.

From: John W.

_'Starting some sort of ruddy ice-breaking thing with the surgical crew. Phone's getting confiscated by the head nurse. Looks a right battle axe; I'll text when we're done, if I ever get this back. Oh, and try to remember to eat something when you finish with the fizzing-skull chap. And sleep. Toaster's behind the box of lajdiok—'_

Battle axe indeed. She should know better than to hijack a flatmate's phone in the middle of a text. Even if it was a tedious one. Sherlock contemplated John's unfinished words darkly, hoping that more than ice—namely, the nurse—got broken in whatever inane exercise John was being put through that had cancelled his ability to be entertaining. His glower set firmly in place by the unhappy incident, he tucked the phone away and pulled on his coat, winding his scarf expertly around his neck. Well, if John had better things to do than talk to his best friend, then so did he.

Gliding down the stairs and over to the front door, he flung it open, fully expecting to step out into the foggy London morning and stride off towards the site of Lestrade's latest (non) puzzling dilemma. He was sick of sitting in the flat; his experiment needed time to propagate and the complete lack of ex-army doctor was hindering his ability to get a decent cup of tea. He would revisit the crime scene and test a few of his hypothesis about the nature of concoctions made out of the victim's specialized (tampered with) shampoo and a select range of cooking oils; never mind looking at the sight of the body's discovery in the backyard, he'd figured out who did it and why ages ago. All that was left was to work out the tiny detail of how—which poisonous combination of ingredients had the murderer utilized to literally eat through the man's skull?

The little brown presence waiting at the foot of the stoop brought him up short. Halting in the doorway, he stared down at the man waiting outside his home—professor at a small college, forties, disgraced marriage, two cats, estranged family except for a smothering mother—and cursed humanity for what must have been the four millionth time during his existence. The client. The doorbell-ringing, ungodly patient client. He'd deleted the bashful-sounding interference the moment he remembered about John. And with good reason, too: the man looked utterly boring. And repulsive. Sherlock could tell from the elbows of his slept-in tweed suit that he'd been up to no good with someone who was definitely not his wife the night before…and on the desk in his own lecture hall, no less.

Rearing up to his full height, the lanky detective focused the full intensity of his gray-green gaze on the mousy intruder. In his most imperious, scathing you're-wasting-my-time-and-contaminating-my-air-su pply-standing-there voice, he demanded, "_Yes?"_

The little man started. He was shorter than Sherlock by an even foot, shorter than John by six inches. Unlike with his flatmate, Sherlock didn't find the disparity endearing. He just found it small. For that reason, it was gratifying when the stranger cringed away from his glare. The sooner Sherlock could scare him off, the sooner he could get on to the more interesting parts of his day. And start distracting himself from the distinct, 5'6" void beside his shoulder.

_Oh, for heaven's sake_.

He was turning into milk toast, pining after one ordinary idiot with a predisposition towards army coats and woolen jumpers. Although, John's sense of humor was hardly ordinary, he amended, feeling the text messages on his phone weighing down his pocket. The blond man _was_ the only person who had managed to consistently get a laugh out of Sherlock Holmes…

_Stop thinking about John._

"M-Mr. Holmes?" the quaking professor ventured, paling dramatically at the sudden increase of hostility in the austere man's gaze. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes?"

Sherlock made a concentrated effort to reign his intensity in, reminding himself that having a fully grown man faint on his doorstep would be more of an inconvenience than to have that self-same man take his leave under his own power. "Yes, that would be me. The problem?"

The man's eyes widened, and he began to shake his head vigorously back and forth, blurring his words together and looking as if he might topple to the pavement with the force of his skull's gyrations. "N-no, no! I don't have—I didn't mean—I wasn't trying to say—"

"I know what you meant," Sherlock cut in, imbuing his tone with enough hard edges to halt the man mid-babble. "Now _please_ reciprocate. What is the _problem_? Why are you _here_?"

Evidently, choosing to speak slowly and carefully—as if he were communicating with a particularly dense child—had been the correct choice. Blinking, the little man nodded and straightened up, losing most of his panicked air as he did so. Sherlock heaved an inner sigh of relief. He'd been on the verge of simply frightening the man witless and carrying on his way before he could recover—to hell with the trouble caused or the scolding from Mrs. Hudson. Not the scolding from John; he was gone. To Dublin. For four days.

_Stop thinking about John!_

Testiness flared up in his mouth again as he batted his inner distractions away, and he stared down at the man in utter challenge, daring him to say something of actual merit. He'd take a blackmailing case at that point, or even an unusually clever burglary. Anything to help to refocus his glitch-riddled hard drive. Anything…that he could actually get the cowering buffoon in front of him to say out loud.

Taking one looming step out of the threshold, Sherlock directed a flinty stare into the mud-colored irises gawking up at him and hissed, "_Well_?"

The professor actually jumped backwards. Sweating profusely along his hairline and rubbing his palms distractedly against the outsides of his thighs, he swallowed agitatedly and stammered, "I—well—there was—Samantha—last night—she's…she's…"

Sherlock had no patience left for whispers. Narrowing his eyes, he ordered, "Speak. Up."

"She's dead," the man squeaked out. He shuddered visibly at the sound of the words and buried his face in his hands. "My God, she's dead! Samantha's dead, and I didn't do it. I _swear_ I didn't do it. But they'll say I did and I'm starting to think…I can't help but think…that maybe I did. I _did_ kill her. I _know_ I didn't, but I think I _did_."

"Samantha. Your lover." Sherlock sincerely doubted that the man would be so upset if the casualty had been his beloved wife.

With a gasp, the man jumped back again, gaping up at him. "How did you…"

"A student."

The professor covered his face again and let out a low, agonized groan, confirming the detective's carefully-disguised speculation. Sherlock raised an eyebrow while the "poor sod," as a certain jumper-wearing doctor would have called him, started to rock back and forth on his heels, cradling his head and moaning quietly. Ignoring the pathetic sight in front of him and the curious looks that the display was beginning to draw from passersby, Sherlock straightened and frowned. His expression wasn't for the other man any longer; that target would have at least deserved a scowl. No, it was directed inwards, at the new data swirling around in his head. A girl was dead. Samantha. And her lover/murderer there on his doorstep?

Well, the supposed murderer. It did seem slightly interesting. Still, he already had a destination in mind. Pursing his lips, Sherlock weighed the potential of the professor's case against his current plan of action. What was more worth his time? A small voice in the back of his mind, the one that kept vigil over the irksome timer that had sprung up unbidden in its corner—ninety-six hours, thirty-three minutes, and eleven seconds until proper tea could again be served—added in a murmur,

_W__hich will be more of a distraction?_

Unbidden, his thoughts went to the long, empty journey to Lestrade's crime scene. Nearly thirty minutes to be filled with nothing but his own silence and the rebellious thoughts in his head. To endure such a thing would be completely unacceptable, a firm voice told him, and he felt no need to think further than that. Stepping aside and sweeping and arm out expressively towards the building's interior, Sherlock indicated the still-open door of 221.

"This calls for further inquiry," he informed his nearly-hysterical guest. "Won't you come in?"


	2. Anxiety

**This chapter is much shorter than the last one. The transition just felt better if I ended it here. Hopefully, you won't mind. I'll be posting the next part soon, if I get my way. As far as I'm concerned, I'm running with this train of thought as fast as I can while the track lasts-for some reason, it hasn't crashed yet. I might actually get this done in the time frame that I want. *cautiously optimistic***

**Disclaimer-You know it = I borrowed it.**

**Thank you for reading!**

**~Knyle B.**

* * *

"What do you mean, it's not there?" John Watson queried, staring rather thickly back at the formidable woman behind the desk. There was a considerable glare coming at him from her direction; he hadn't been far off when he deemed her a battle axe earlier. A very stubborn, very frustrating, and very blunt battle axe. Opting for a more reasonable approach in the face of her displeasure, he forcibly made his tone more deferent and pointed out, "It was in there this morning with all the rest of them, ma'am; you took it from me while I was finishing a text. Do you remember?"

"No. I don't," she informed him shortly, eyeing him like he was a pestilence sent from on high. "I'm sorry, Doctor, but unless your mobile phone is in this basket," she hefted said receptacle illustratively, "It is not, and never was, in my possession."

"But you took it this morning!" John exclaimed, uncaring that he was being repetitive. It had been a horrifically long day; he was tired, he was hungry, and he still had a good hour's cab ride ahead of him if he wanted to make it to his hotel before passing out. And, evidently, a fifteen-minute argument with the head nurse over the whereabouts of his mobile. John would have wanted to punch something, if he weren't so focused on getting out of the convention building and into his bed. The pinched frown he was getting in response to his perseverance wasn't helping his mood any, either. "Right out of my hands! You _have_ to remember; the whole staff was sniggering about it for an hour."

She looked him right in the eye and shook her head. "I'm sorry, Doctor. Perhaps you should enquire with the other nurses."

Surprisingly, John felt his temper beginning to spark despite his lethargy. He hadn't thought that he had that much energy left to spare. "There were no other nurses with us," he pointed out, deliberately not gritting his teeth. "For the whole day. Only you. When you collected our phones."

It was no use. She blinked at him, implacable, and he accepted the inevitable; without a call to her superiors—which he couldn't easily make when his phone was missing—he was going not going to get his mobile back. With an inner sigh, John nodded and let it go, shoving away from her desk. He would just have to call Sherlock when he got back to his room. He didn't have the energy to do anything else. Walking to the elevators, he rode down to the ground floor and walked out into the city evening, tightening his thin brown jacket against the chill.

Glancing about on reflex, he remembered Sherlock's worried texts and smiled. More to conciliate the flatmate muttering in his head than to reassure himself, he made sure that no suspicious shadow detached from its wall to start following him while he made his way to a busier street. His feet felt like they'd been clad in lead; he tried to make himself pay even more attention to his surroundings in order to distract himself from the weariness weighing at his limbs.

It was amazing how different one city could seem from the other. In essence, all metropolises were the same. Cars. Buildings. Urbanity. Light pollution. But generality didn't count. Dublin was large, Dublin was bright, and Dublin was foggy, but it was not London. John quietly lamented the fact as he finally gave in to the outcry in his limbs and halted at the curb, trying to hail down a cab. A city that was not London definitely had its drawbacks, he thought. If he were in London, he would be with Sherlock. If he were with Sherlock, he would be with Sherlock's uncanny ability to summon cabs out of thin air. And if he could summon cabs…well, then he wouldn't be standing there, swaying haphazardly on his feet on a Dublin sidewalk, feeling like he was about to keel over from sleep deprivation.

What on Earth was wrong with him? Blinking rapidly, John steadied himself against a light pole and rubbed his eyes, trying to dispel the cobwebs gathering behind them. Why was he so tired? The conference had been long that day, certainly, but nothing like the marathon-turned-fist-fight that he felt like he'd participated in. Determinedly, he made himself assess his condition, trying to discern what sort of medical event might be at the source of his trouble. The search for transportation was forgotten; he was never going to catch a cab anyway without Sherlock. Once again, John thought longingly of home and useful consulting detectives. A dizzying wave of serotonin had him reeling a moment later, scattering all such thoughts. Tightening his grip on the pole, John abandoned all brainwork and reverted to the easiest—and unfortunately most likely—conclusion: he'd been drugged.

_Where?_ he wondered groggily, casting his thoughts back through the day even as he looked around furtively, trying to spot which of the blurred shapes around him were friendly and which weren't. There had been regular refreshment breaks at the conference, he blearily recalled. Administration of the sleeping agent could have transpired during any one of those times. Considering the rate he was being affected at, however, his money was on the last course of tea that had been brought around. It fit the time frame, and it was the only one that had been poured _for_ the doctors instead of by them. He could almost hear Sherlock's voice in his head, grumbling about how stupid it was to accept drinks from strangers. It reminded him vaguely of the talk he'd had with his mother after his first outrageous night out with his mates back in school. The advice had been belated then, as well.

Feeling a little perturbed that his flatmate was mirroring the advice of his long-dead parent, John hastily shook off both lines of thought. He wasn't at home, and he wasn't back in school, either. He was in Dublin. On the curb. Leaning against a light pole. Oh, and he was drugged. And there was a great-big, hugely obvious empty street stretching out on both sides of him. And it was getting dark. And there was a car coming—no, it was there; it was parking. With men. Lots of men. Big men.

Wonderful.

John fought them off as best he could. He was as surprised as the rest of them when he actually managed to drop two of his uniformly enormous attackers to the ground. He didn't see them get up again. But then there were more of them, and they had knives, batons, rope. He really couldn't do much once they'd started using the rope. Still, he tried. Took the cuts, took the blows, dealt his own. Avoided one corded snake that tried to close around his forearm, pulled against another that had managed to tighten around his wrist. He didn't bother calling for help; he needed that breath, needed every gasp of air that wasn't forced out of his lungs by the mighty kick to his side or the furious blow to his gut.

_Those_ hurt. He couldn't remember which happened when, whether he had fallen after the punch or gotten kicked standing on the ground. It didn't matter. The ropes were tight, all on him now. One for each arm and leg. Two for his neck, rough and constricting as they were pulled in opposite directions to keep him still. Six men to his one, six giants to stomp on tiny, tiny David. They'd taken his sling, split it, and used it to truss him like an animal. And they stomped really, really hard. John was vaguely aware that he should feel indignant about his position. But then, that was his name: John, not David. Whatever the situation was that he was in, he was certain that it wasn't biblical. Leave it to all those years of Sunday school to only stick in his head when he least needed them to distract him.

The men finally stopped kicking, and he slumped against his bonds, no longer able to even strain against them. God, he was tired. It felt like his whole body was a bruise, and the adrenaline that had been driving him was slowly being devoured by the insidious exhaustion poisoning his system. At least they were done thumping him for a while. John lay still and tried to focus on the healing cool of the sidewalk on his skin. He felt it as he was lifted bodily and thrown into the car boot—_ow_. And then as they started to drive, bouncing him around atop a bed of gravel and tangled ropes. _Ow. Owowowowow_. So much for staying still. All things considered, it seemed like a much better idea to fall into a dead sleep than to stay awake and suffer. The slumber threatening at the edges of his mind was being admirably persistent, really. He believed in rewarding hard work.

John really hoped that Sherlock would get antsy enough to come and wake him soon. With that thought in mind, he gave up on his fight for consciousness and willingly succumbed to the darkness.


	3. Not My Area

**This one isn't very long either. I'm not sure how consistent my chapter length is going to be. I guess I'll just go with whatever works best for the story. Sherlock gets to show off his bedside manner, and I get to lose my fingernails as I try to form some sort of coherent deduction. Yippee.**

**Disclaimer-You know it, I don't own it.**

**I hope you like!**

**~Knyle B.**

* * *

The little professor took an inordinate amount of time to calm down. Once Sherlock had dislodged him from the front step and shepherded him impatiently up the stairs, he had stood awkwardly in the door to the sitting room, shifting from one foot to the other and whimpering halfheartedly. After two seconds of it, Sherlock was ready to stuff a gag in the man's mouth and drag him over to a chair. Frowning in distaste, the he edged around the tiny man and walked further into the room, tossing his coat onto a chair and dropping scarf and gloves on top. The professor failed to follow as he'd hoped. The foiled plan brought a deeper grimace to Sherlock's face, but he schooled it to smoothness before he turned around.

He knew better than to continue frightening the client once he'd accepted the case. It was going to be nigh on impossible to get any pertinent information from him anyway, thanks to the state he'd worked himself (admittedly with some help on Sherlock's part) into already. As much as Sherlock despised the practice, some mollycoddling was in order if he wanted to get any farther than _my god; she's dead_, which was about all that the professor seemed capable of articulating at the moment. Or, more preferably, some purposeful intimidation. Turning around to survey the client, he kept his face neutral while choosing which tactic to use. The professor wasn't looking very steady on his feet.

Mindful of the fact that Mrs. Hudson could return from her shopping at any time, he decided to avoid any of the loud thumping noises that falling bodies were wont to produce and motioned suggestively to the couch. "Why don't you sit down, Mr.…?"

"Hobbes," the little man stuttered. He finally took his hands away from his face but showed no signs of moving towards the offered seat. "Corbin Hobbes."

Noting how his prompting had been ignored—or, more likely, missed—Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the inferior intellect occupying the room with him. Hobbes saw the glint in his eyes and gulped audibly, taking an instinctive half-step back before Sherlock recalculated. Reversing his expression in an instant, the detective took a few deliberate steps backwards and folded gracefully down into his customary chair. It was the work of a moment to turn it so that it faced the couch, and then he sat, watching Mr. Hobbes with an air of ingenuous curiosity. His hands rose up to his chin in a gesture of habit, fingertips pressing together into an almost prayerful pose as he contemplated his twitchy visitor in outer tranquility. It was meant to be an innocuous position; he had regretfully set aside the prospect of strong-arm tactics. Hobbes was more likely to turn tail and run than freeze on the spot in the face of any fierce adversity.

Although, at any other time, freezing seemed to be the man's forte. Sherlock was dismayed to see that the smaller man had yet to move from his spot in the doorway. The dolt seemed content to stand and dither there for the remainder of the decade. That wouldn't do. Sherlock decided to try yet another tack. It didn't look as if he was going to get anywhere by waiting, but the man had responded earlier when he'd deduced the less-than-auspicious identity of the departed Samantha. Perhaps if he implemented a few more of his observations…

"You've been a professor for over twenty years," he began, watching how Hobbes stiffened at his choice of topics. "A fixture in your department, tenured, with the cleanest track record of any of your fellows or betters combined."

Hobbes was gawking again. Fisting the edges of his tweed in his hands, he slowly walked deeper into the room and sank onto the sofa, his knees giving out at the last moment like they'd simply lost the ability to function. The professor didn't notice his lack of motor skills. He gazed at Sherlock like he was a creature beyond magic, some terrible and dazzling phenomenon that he'd heard about but never dared to believe in. With an inward wince at such sudden, surprising prose, Sherlock stopped that thought and shot it dead in its tracks, lest it get any more ridiculous. Good Lord, he was waxing eloquent. And of course he knew why. Sherlock vowed to delete all mention of—_don't think about John_—the blog from his hard drive as soon as he got the chance. Then he made himself check back in to what the quivering man in front of him was saying.

"Y-yes, that's me," Corbin Hobbes stammered. "Right down to my bones, that's me." Turning a tad introspective on the last bit, he murmured it to himself with a frown between his brows, like he was trying to convince himself of the truth in his words. Sherlock disregarded the obvious insecurity as sentiment and waited for him to finish. With a glance upwards, Hobbes complied, telling him dazedly, "I can't believe it. How did you know? I'd…I'd heard you were good, but this…"

Sherlock snorted derisively in the face of his doubt. Of course he was good. He was the best. Whether or not the idiotic populace of the Earth cottoned on was far from his problem. His only true trouble was humanity's utter lack of talent for giving precise information. Five minutes wasted in the dowdy man's presence, and he'd still not managed to get a full story from him. Ignoring Hobbes's line of conversation, then, he soldiered on through his deducing.

"Admirable career notwithstanding, you've worked yourself like a machine for the college, and it hasn't earned you even a glimpse of the limelight. You're not the best, not the brightest, but up until recently, you've been regarded as the most stable. Even if you could use that to become something more, you're too timid and subservient to handle the stress. You can't handle disappointment or any actual reliance being placed on you." Halting in his calm diatribe to let Hobbes remember how to close his mouth and catch a breath of air, Sherlock scowled down his fingertips at his elegantly crossed legs, pondering the problem set before him.

At length, which for him was only some five seconds, he looked back up into Hobbes's wide, cornered eyes and pronounced accusingly, "An affair with a student doesn't fit. You're too spineless; you would never willingly betray your wife. Therefore, it was not you who strayed. You were pushed off the path—pulled, rather. Samantha showed the initiative. As you're not a compelling personality or even remotely attractive, it was for unsentimental reasons. Motivation was probably a better grade on the exams or even the rush of being the master of an authority figure—not money, you're barely keeping yourself in passable clothing as it is. You benefitted from the relationship in a secondary manner. Samantha was reaping the rewards, but you got to enjoy the side effects. Giving power over your profession and personal life over to a student in exchange for sex, forbidden excitement, and the occasional pat on the head: not your finest hour. And very, very boring."

Hobbes had sagged miserably back against the sofa cushions as he listened to Sherlock's deep baritone draw out his humiliation. Shaking his head once the detective was done, he scrubbed his face with a hand and moaned, "I know. I know; it was so stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. She never gave me a chance to really stop and think, you know? Back when this all started, I'd just had a row with Amelia. Went to the office to work off some steam, and Samantha was there, waiting. She was always there, after that. Every time I was angry, tired, not thinking straight…she was just…there. It didn't matter when or where; I couldn't say no to her." He barked out a short, self-loathing laugh-turned-sob. "God, I was so, so _stupid_…"

"Yes. So you've mentioned," Sherlock cut him off with a marked lack of _would you _please_ stop being so unbearably dull_ thrown in. He assumed that John would have been pleased. If he were there. And not in Dublin. For four days. _Don't think about John_. "But now Samantha is dead, and you claim to be the number one suspect. Why? What happened to her? How did she come to die so shortly after the two of you desecrated your desk last night?"

At that, Hobbes actually let out a high-pitched squeak. Rearing back against the couch, he leveled a shaking finger at the silver gaze glittering at him from behind clasped hands. "Y-you can't know that!" he cried, as if telling Sherlock what he could and couldn't be aware of automatically made it so. "No one knows that! There was no one else there—the building was closed—I looked—she said—were you spying on us?!"

"Don't be nauseating," Sherlock warned him. "Or I'll throw you out. I don't have to see something happen for me to know about it; your elbows are all the witness I need." Leaning back into his chair, he deleted the distasteful mental image that the facts had conjured up for him and felt mildly sorry for Hobbes's arm joints. "I could sit here and waste more of my day figuring out what happened last night by looking at you, but I'm not going to. You came to me, Mr. Hobbes. Either explain to me your _confounding_ problem or…" _Get out of my air space_, he mentally ended, checking himself at the last second when a rather pointed, John-sounding voice sighed in his head at the coming choice of words.

Hobbes nodded dumbly. Abruptly, he became more still and composed than he had been in the entire time that Sherlock had seen him, he sat with his hands clasped in his lap, his knees primly together, and his eyes downcast. "It was 2:00 am," he began, thankfully keeping his voice within the audible and articulate ranges. "Samantha and I…we were in the lecture hall. I stepped out; I wanted a wash, I'd spilled some coffee while…" He shook his head dizzyingly, presumably to rid himself of that particular thought. Continuing on in a whisper while Sherlock leaned forward irritably to hear, he retold in anguish, "I couldn't have been gone more than five minutes. I came back into the hall, and the lights were out. We'd…we'd left on the floor lamp by the desk earlier. I thought that she was fooling around, so I went over, but she…on the floor…I couldn't…"

Sherlock just barely managed not to roll his eyes at the snail's pace of Hobbes's explanation. "She was dead," he finished for the professor, not bothering to soften his words or tone in the slightest. "So we've established. How?"

Hobbes sobbed, fidgeting madly with his jacket bottom. "M-my belt," he choked out, tears streaming down his face. "It was around her neck. The lamp had been smashed, it was lying about with blood on the base of it. It looked like…she was bleeding all over. Like they'd hit her with it."

He collapsed into weeping. How utterly repelling. Keen on damming the flood, Sherlock shoved a stack of books over, unearthing the squashed box of tissues beneath, and proffered it gingerly. It took Hobbes a moment to notice, but then he reached out, hugging the box to his chest like a teddy bear and sobbing all the harder. Ugh. Snatching his hand back as soon as the pitiful creature in front of him had brushed against it, Sherlock sat as far back in his seat as possible, propped an elbow on the chair arm, and dropped his head on his fist in defeat. Getting the story out of Corbin Hobbes was going to be even more painful than he'd feared, he judged. Under normal circumstances, he would have never sat through the messy, emotional breakdown currently unfolding on his furniture. But then, under normal circumstances…_don't think about John_.

With a long-suffering sigh, Sherlock heaved his subconscious out the proverbial window, tuned out the wretched caterwauling going on in the background, and settled in to wait.


	4. I'm Not Out of Control

**Okay, so this chapter had an unexpected growth spurt. And when I use that metaphor, please liken it to that puny little boy in 3rd grade that was suddenly 6 feet tall by middle school. I'm sure we've all met him in one reincarnation or another. And we were all, his mother included, stunned by the fact that he was so big already and yet****_ wasn't done growing_****... You get the idea. This one got away from me.**

**Anyway, concerning the actual content, I apologize for any of you going "Him again?!" But I did specifically put Moriarty in the list of characters on the story description. **

**Incidentally, I also mentioned that there would be twisted!JM, which came into play here. So...**

**Warnings: Torture, Mentions of the Mentally Disturbed, Homicide, and Various Other Unhappy Things**

**Please let me know what you think, and I hope you enjoy (Except you, John. Sorry.)!**

**Disclaimer-You know it, I don't own it!**

**~Knyle B.**

* * *

John found his way back towards consciousness to be a meandering journey. He wandered a bit with every moment, each step placed on a writhing shifting surface, a path full of twists and turns that ran perpendicular to the object of his efforts rather than directly at it. Maddeningly, he would draw nearer to the surface one second, only to find himself veering sharply away the next moment. Clarity was a sneaky bastard. Every time he thought he had it, it slipped between his fingers. It was like trying to get Sherlock to eat or sleep. And it wasn't even getting easier. With every bend in his route, he dropped back farther from his goal. Each time it seemed to take him longer and longer to make up for lost ground, clawing sharply to turn himself back around towards waking thought.

It was an arduous task, waking up. In his more lucid moments, he wondered why it was so important for him to even do so. Pain was filtering steadily through all of the thickness clouding his head, and he knew for a fact that waking up would only sharpen it. A lot. And he really didn't want it to get any worse than it was. Which was probably why he was finding it so hard to shake the fog he'd fallen into. Still…the urge to be aware was strong. Too strong to ignore. There was something important going on, and John knew instinctively that things wouldn't end well if he missed it. He had to wake up and find out what it was.

He just wished it'd stop taking so damn long.

His senses came back to him in increments; a faint rushing in his ears was the first sign of recovery. Then his breathing picked up, bringing in the faint smells of paint, dirt, damp, and laundry soap—_laundry soap_? Why—where—John realized that he was laying on his back on something soft: a mattress and a thin blanket, it felt like. They were the source of the unexpectedly clean smell. The dirt and damp he put down to whatever location he was in. A cellar, perhaps, or the basement of an old building. Beyond that, though, he didn't bother analyzing.

There was something a bit more insistent to be dealt with: pain. For some reason, his shoulders were sore and his arms stiff. Following that line of sensation out, he found a hard, dull throbbing in his wrists and tingling pinpricks beyond. He shied away from the discomfort. So his hands were tied, stretched out to either side of him. Taking the mattress into account, they were probably attached to a bed frame of some sort. Just _excellent_. No wonder he was sore.

But that still didn't account for the overwhelming sensation of _hurt_ that enveloped him.

His perplexity was tempered by contrast. It helped him to keep his calm knowing that it definitely could be worse. He still hated his situation, felt his stomach roiling in protest to the stress and adrenaline building in his system, because he really, truly hated feeling helpless. But he was still in control. The panic remained at manageable levels. As bad as it was, he'd awoken to worse conditions after being kidnapped.

_Kidnapped_?

John stilled. Oh. _Kidnapped_. That was what had happened. _Again_. Immediately at the thought, he was inundated with memories tracing back from the nurse's desk to his half-conscious struggle with the thugs on the street. The pain, having been validated by the recollection, bloomed in full force, nearly forcing a groan from his lips. _Nearly_ being the operative word. More out of instinct than forethought, John didn't give voice to his protest. He might have the second time around, but thankfully, his adrenaline was beginning to spike enough that it numbed his hurts. A bit clearer-headed for it, John vowed to stay still and composed for the benefit of any watching enemies. The longer he could scout out the situation without them knowing of it, the better.

Before he stretched his senses out to his surroundings, however, he went through a quick systems check. Everything attached to him seemed to be in working order. Once again, he felt out his arms, refusing to flinch at the disquiet waiting there. No parts missing. His nose still functioned, but his ears were filled with too much white noise; the aftereffects of the drug had yet to wear off. Continuing to test his abilities, John worked his tongue, finding his mouth and throat too dry to even swallow. Not too surprising.

Farther below, he could feel more ropes around his ankles, pulling his legs straight down instead of splaying them out like his arms. He'd seen something like it on his first tour; a prisoner tied with arms to the bedposts and a cord looping around the bottom of the bedframe, an ankle at either end. John's unit had saved the man—an American soldier—from the insurgent cell holding him hostage. He'd lost both hands from the cords cutting off his circulation. That, coupled the torture that he'd been through, was too much to cope with. The poor bastard had committed suicide in the recovery ward of the base hospital.

John didn't plan on following his example.

"Thinking bad thoughts, Johnny-boy?"

John started and gasped, his eyes flying open. Two glittering, mad irises bored into his, blurring in and out slightly as his vision refocused. Recognition dawned like ice water in his veins, sending prickling cold down from the crown of his head to the base of his spine. Oh, no. Not again. Moriarty. Why hadn't he known it would be Moriarty?

Seeing John's eyes widen, the madman favored him with an unhinged grin, chuckling gleefully. John felt a rough, stubby grip in his hair, and his head was yanked to the side, straightened so that he looked directly up into Moriarty's malicious leer. The criminal indicated his own forehead with his fingers illustratively, informing John, "You get a little crease here when there's dark stuff floating 'round in that empty skull of yours. Can't wait to see how you look when you have nightmares."

John's heart, momentarily halted by his shock, started pounding at light speed, and the cold that had overtaken him turned into frostbite. Immediately, his mind was racing, trying to figure out where he was, why he was there, what to say, how to get free, where Sherlock was—

Moriarty didn't give the tied man a chance to regroup, changing his demeanor as swiftly as Sherlock made deductions. All at once, his attentive, welcoming face was gone, replaced by a mischievous, saucy grin. Leaning in so close that his hot breath wafted against the side of John's face, he purred, "Did you miss me, Johnny?"

"Like the Plague," John spat, jerking his head away from the criminal's mouth.

It was difficult not to reverse directions and break Moriarty's nose with his skull, but his automatic repellence to the man won out. Proximity to Moriarty was making his skin crawl and a knot of bile rise in his throat. Otherwise, however, he felt like there was an electric current running through him, lighting his nerve endings on fire and coiling his aching muscles into high tension, ready to spring at a moment's notice. He was dimly aware of the fear that gathered somewhere deep in the back of his brain; he easily ignored it. John wasn't afraid. The situation had just gone even more pear-shaped than before, but his response to danger had never been a typical one. Not on the battlefield, and not the last time that he'd been in a criminal mastermind's clutches. No, he was not scared.

He was angry.

Moriarty laughed at his hostility. The fingers on John's head tightened and pulled, forcing him to face back to where he had been. "Come now, pet, don't be like that," the madman cooed, unexpectedly releasing his hold on the short blond hair and raking his nails across John's scalp in some perverted parody of the soothing motion that John's mother had done when he was still a little boy. "I've waited a looooooong time to see you again."

"Piss off," John rasped in answer, craning his neck to escape the unwanted touch on his skin.

It earned him a high pitched giggle and a backhanded blow across his face.

_Ow_.

As John's head was still reeling from the hit, he felt the bed indent on to his right. Moriarty sat down next to him and leaned over his face once more, farther than the last time. Bending down until their noses were almost touching, the lunatic stared into John's eyes with something like adoration shining in his gaze. "You're so touchingly loyal," he breathed rapturously, scanning over repulsion on John's face in utter delight. "I could just eat you up for being so blindingly devoted to Sherlock."

That was a very different message than the one he'd gotten whilst being strapped into semtex. Something was not right. Well, even less right than he'd assumed already. Glaring up at the sick wanker gazing down at him, John fought to ignore the dry, reptilian-feeling fingers stroking the bruise forming along his cheekbone and snarled, "What the _hell_ do you want?"

"Hm?"

Instantly, all traces of levity dropped off of Moriarty's face, leaving instead a cold, calculating void that John remembered a little too well from their last meeting. The hand against his face stilled along with Moriarty's expression. It was a danger sign, that look. A very big, capital letter, neon-lit sign warning DANGER at the top of its lungs. The last time he'd seen it, he'd gotten drilled in the gut with a two-by-four and left to the mercy of four punch-happy thugs for an hour. And then there had been the semtex. In the new situation, John had no idea what undesirable thing might come of Moriarty's seriousness. He couldn't help but imagine what it would feel like if those fingers pressed a little harder, dug in their nails, exacerbated the swelling beneath them.

It would be like Christmas compared to whatever else Moriarty doubtless planned on doing to him.

Moriarty wasn't in on his internal dialogue. Like Sherlock, he could have probably guessed most of it, but he didn't seem to have an interest in doing so at the moment, luckily for John. Instead, the genius applauded John's inquiry in a flat, lethal voice. "Good question."

Without warning, he bounded away, springing off of the bed and dancing across the room—it was a small, plain, and had no windows, John finally saw, with only the bed and a desk for furniture. Skipping over to the desk, Moriarty tapped something on top of it and turned to face John. For some reason, there was a wide, manic grin stretching across his face. To avoid looking at the insanity shining in the eyes above it, John focused on Moriarty's hand, still tapping frenetically on the closed laptop that it had found. Beside it sat a small box with several wires protruding, and beside that, a small handheld camera on a tripod. _No torture equipment_, the doctor noted with some small relief. Although, that could be easily remedied if the tools were brought in as needed through the door opposite him. Or simply kept in one of the desk's drawers.

"It's really very simple, Johnny," Moriarty crooned into his thoughts, disrupting them. He was stroking the top of the laptop tenderly, looking down at John with a bizarre mask of fondness on his face. Smiling benevolently at his tied hostage, he explained, "You and I have a mutual…interest. He's a brilliant, beautiful man. I would know; we were practically _made_ for each other." His dreamy look cut out, and he shook a chastising finger in John's direction. "But of the two of us, yooou get to follow him arooouunnd. Simple, stupid little Johnny with a limp and a dodgy shoulder, the only man in the world that Sherlock Holmes will keep for a pet."

"_You_ were made for an asylum," John gritted, refusing to let out any of the additional expletives waiting on his tongue. "And I am not Sherlock's _pet_."

"Please, John. Of course you are," Moriarty refuted him with a twisted, hateful smile. "You follow him, you fetch for him, you come when he calls. The only thing you're missing is a wagging tail."

John refused to dignify that with an answer, but Moriarty didn't show any sign of minding. Cocking his head to the side in that strange, oscillating way that he had, he mused absently, "You're all just animals to him, you people. There's only one other person like him: me. But no matter what I do, he still chooses you. Boring, dull, dimwitted _you_." He pouted, sticking out his bottom lip and crossing his arms. "It's just not fair, Johnny. Not fair at all."

It was maddening, wondering where such a bizarre conversation could be going. The only thing John was sure of was that the ending, whatever it happened to be, would involve unhappiness on his part. Leery of encouraging that outcome to happen any faster, he chose to stay quiet in response to Moriarty recovered from his impression of a five-year-old, watching warily as one long-nailed hand grasped the laptop and flicked it open. Casually, the villain punched the space bar, making the screen light up. For absolutely no practical reason at all, John's brain chose to notice that he was as expensively clad as always—the suit the mastermind was wearing could probably put a block of children in the slums through college.

Moriarty's light voice brought him back to reality. Building on his previous statement, the consulting criminal remarked nonchalantly, "I thought I'd fix that."

_Not Good._ Something small and heavy dropped into the pit of John's stomach. He obstinately held it in, keeping any reaction off of his empty face. Most people couldn't draw inspiration from a blank canvas. He certainly didn't want to give his current observer any ideas.

Moriarty watched him shut down with eyes narrowed. "You can do that all you want, Johnny," he grumbled, sounding like a put-out child. "It's not going to help you. You're only making the game less fun."

John stared mutely back at him, his resolve to remain uninteresting only solidified by the statement. Moriarty glared back. A moment passed.

Two.

Three.

Fou—

"Well, I guess I'll have to break you open the haaard waaay," Moriarty exclaimed brightly, clapping his hands together thunderously. John jumped in spite of himself, growling inwardly when the reaction earned a high-pitched giggle. "I suppose having a bit of quiet while we're doing this isn't tooooo disappointing. I was going to explain a few things to you first, anyway."

His hand drifted back to the laptop screen, drawing John's eyes. A picture was there, a head-and-shoulders shot of a neat, diminutive-looking man in a tweed suit and bowtie. _Professor_, John's mind screamed, recognizing the stereotypical getup and university portrait format anywhere. Likely, the picture had been taken straight from the stranger's school ID. At the same time as he made the identification, John's thoughts spun out in all directions in confusion, extrapolating on why Moriarty could possibly be interested in the plain little man in the picture. Well, when he thought of the fellow _that_ way, there was a certain personal resemblance…

"This is Corbin, Johnny," Moriarty interrupted, cordially gesturing to the screen as if the picture's subject was there in the flesh. "Day to day, he's even more boring than _you_."

John felt slightly ashamed for the wave of jealousy that washed through him.

Moriarty giggled at his disgruntled expression and leaned back against the desk, the picture of a relaxing billionaire, thanks to his immaculate, quadruple-figure suit and gleaming shoes. Abruptly, though, the façade cracked; one hand rose, unbuttoning the jacket. Shrugging the outer covering off, the madman nodded hintingly to the picture on the laptop, directing John's focus away from his now-bared dress shirt and waistcoat. With the recumbent man's attention suitably refocused, the consulting criminal went on in a voice that rose and dropped pitches at random syllables, "Corbin has a problem, you see. His girlfriend—well, she _was_ his girlfriend—came across a bit of trouble last night." He giggled. "Somebody strangled her with Corbin's belt."

Sure. _Somebody_ did. John stifled his sarcasm as Moriarty smiled beatifically at the computer screen and draped his jacket over the back of the desk chair. Unsurprisingly, the lunatic's mild, sugared tones didn't match his subject matter in the slightest. "And he with a wife at home, being the only person in the area…well, it doesn't look too good for him. Not unless he can find someone able to prove him innocent." He gazed off into the air, his eyes glazing over with an unhealthy, adoring sheen. "Someone _smart_. Someone _amazing_."

_Sherlock_. At that, the army doctor couldn't help himself. Fisting his stinging hands, he felt the cords tighten around the pounding in his wrists as he pulled against them in mute rage. _No. Oh, no_, he thought furiously. Why the fucking hell was the sick bastard so bloody set on buggering his best friend? Didn't he have any other hobbies? Polo? Model building? Online-fucking-chess? Why was it always _Sherlock_?

Never one to miss a sign of weakness, Moriarty raised an eyebrow at his reaction. It probably wouldn't do to give his enemy any more ammunition to use against him, but… Aware that he'd already, as the madman had said on their previous meeting, 'given himself away,' John gave in to his urge to reply and growled, "Leave him out of this. You've already sent him cases to solve, remember? Repeating yourself is only going to make him bored."

Moriarty tilted his head, watching John amusedly. He made a light humming sound in the back of his throat and sang, "I don't think sooo."

Snapping another key on the laptop, he sprang across the distance between the desk and the bed, landing on his stomach beside John. Both of them bounced with the impact, and when John had settled enough for his head to stop swimming, he looked down to his right and saw Moriarty watching him there, his chin propped childishly on his fists and his elbows planted in the mattress. The light shining out of his eyes was unholy.

"How else is he going to keep himself busy while you're away?" the madman pondered. "Part of why you're here is because he's so disgustingly dependent on you, Johnny. My little games are the perfect distraction from the absence of his favorite pet. He won't be _able_ to turn them down."

Reaching out with the hand closest to John, he splayed his fingers over the blond man's stomach. John could feel the warmth of his body heat through the unusually thin fabric; he'd worn a dress shirt and tie to the conference meetings in the place of his customary layers and jumper. He'd already felt out of sorts without the added skins of material, but realizing how sensitive it allowed him to be made him downright uncomfortable. The unwanted touch on his stomach made him feel unwarrantedly exposed.

The thought did strange things to his insides. All of a sudden, his gut was twisting a little tighter, his skin was feeling a little pricklier, and the jumpiness threatening in the back of his head was getting a little—no, _much_—louder. It wasn't panic. He was too well-disciplined to succumb to that. But it was as close to it that he'd gotten since…well, since Afghanistan. Getting shot. He clenched his jaw, seeking to assert control back over himself. He couldn't afford to lose his head under the circumstances. But then Moriarty started running his fingers over the ridges of his stomach, and John started wishing that there had been some cause for him to put on a suit of armor that morning. Or his flac jacket. Or a tank. Whatever it took to erase the rough streaks of sickness-inducing warmth branding him across his belly.

A soft little hum below his chin was all the indication he had of what his captor might be thinking. Not fluent in the language of wordless noise-making, John hoped that it was a sign of boredom. That hope was immediately dashed as without warning, Moriarty pulled his shirt out of his waistband and shoved five grasping fingers underneath, skin on skin. Caught by surprise, the doctor jerked back from the madman's imposition, feeling nails scrape across his clenching abdominal muscles. His arms and legs strained against his bonds, aching to break free and help him beat the shit out of the sick animal suddenly looking like he wanted to go crawling all over him. What the hell was Moriarty doing? How could John stop him? Why was he—what was he—

"Ooh, _Johnny_!" Moriarty hummed, wiggling his fingers over the muscle that they had found. "Look what you've been hiding! You were holding out on me last time, hm?" He yanked John's shirt and vest up and out of the way, baring his entire stomach, and intoned impassively, "I'm _hurt_."

He shifted the hand on John's stomach. Its fingers trailed downwards at a diagonal, following a long, slanted scar that John had received from a pissed piece of shrapnel.

"But then, so are you."

The wound ran from his left ribcage across his lower abdomen; Moriarty ran a course all the way down and dug the nail of his forefinger into John's belly button. Correct that; the _claw_ of his forefinger. Biting down on whatever he was about to say, John cringed back from the flare of pain, still trying to figure out what was going on. His eyes flew desperately around the room, alighting on the laptop at last. Unwilling to look down at Moriarty and risk seeing the hand he felt touching him on his skin, he blurted out in a gasp, "Weren't you going to tell me about Corbin?"

Blessedly, the harassment of his abdominal muscles paused. Looking surprised, Moriarty raised his head—John felt able to look down and face him once the hand attacking him had frozen. His captor looked thwarted. Glancing carelessly back over his shoulder, the madman huffed out a put-upon sigh and grumbled up at John, "What about him?"

John hadn't placed much stock in the idea of distracting him, but Christ, it was working. Knowing that Moriarty's informative mood was unlikely to last past the next few sentences, the doctor pressed quickly, "Why did you send him to Sherlock? Is he another pip, like with the bombings?"

"Nope!" Moriarty replied cheerfully, patting John patronizingly on the stomach. "But good try, Johnny. Well, horrible try, really, but still. Can't blame the dumb for being dumber."

Pursing his lips, John focused very hard on not shuddering beneath the fingers knocking on him. "Then what?"

Moriarty wasn't looking at him any longer, evidently more preoccupied with some miniscule detail at the center of John's chest. His fingers had started circling again; John diverted his gaze to the ceiling and gritted his teeth. "I sent the dear professor as a bit of insurance, pet," he heard the madman murmur. "I just needed someone in place to make sure that things stayed interesting, in case you didn't want to play fair." Eyes sharpening, Moriarty looked up to John's chin and grinned at the muscles he could see flexing in the ex-soldier's jaw. "He's there for _you_."

Startled, John looked back down at him. "What?"

For _him_? That wasn't right. In all of his crimes, throughout all of his puzzles, Moriarty's damnable focus was on Sherlock. Sherlock was his playmate, Sherlock was his sparring partner, Sherlock was his unrequited wet dream—whatever fascination for another individual amounted to in his twisted mind. Moriarty executed extravagant machinations to make _Sherlock_ conform to his rules. Moriarty manipulated events to make _Sherlock_ play his games. It was never about _John_. John was a tool, a means to an end to buy his friend's cooperation or to distract the detective from using his skills to their full potential. Whichever use Moriarty assigned him, it was only that of a stepping stone. He was not the object of the man's obsession. He was the obsession's shadow.

Moriarty drank in the mystification on John's face with a laugh. "Sooomebody doesn't geeet iiit," he trilled, bopping the blond man on the nose with his forefinger. It was the same digit that he had used to invade John's belly button. There was a sheen of redness on it. _First blood_, the ex-soldier thought dully. Before he could stop it, a chill crawled down his spine. It was all becoming a little too real a little too fast. Distantly, he heard Moriarty warble, something about psychological history and oblivious, walking shock collars. And then something along the lines of, "Corbin's going to be sooo useful."

John snapped back into focus. Something about that last bit had set off warning bells in his cloudy head. Frowning, he heard himself ask, "How?"

Moriarty sighed again, telling him testily, "I was getting to that part." Instantly, he was gone from John's side, speaking over the roaring wave of relief that slammed into the bound man as he strode over to the laptop. "I know that you were a soldier, John," he remarked, and then glanced slyly in the blond man's direction. "A very, very good one, considering that Hippocratic Oath you took."

John's stomach gave a twinge. Naturally the consulting criminal would hit upon one of his greatest insecurities about his service on the first try. He'd no doubt done his research; in all likelihood John was due for a long rehashing of all his life's failures and low points on top of whatever physical torture the madman had planned.

"You could kill me with your bare hands, if way you wanted to," the criminal went on airily. "…_Unless_ I convinced you that keeping me alive was the better option."

"Fat chance," John snapped, acutely aware of the agony in his wrists and the hatred blazing in his chest.

Moriarty just smiled. Reaching down, he tapped a few keys on the computer, bringing up a second screen with an image on it, this one a still frame of a video feed, going by the numbers in the corner. John recognized one of the blurry subjects to be the dozy-looking man from before: Corbin Hobbes. "The beautiful thing about Corbin, Johnny," the madman enthused, "is that he doesn't know that he's one of mine. He's just a wee little bloke from Crawthorne, been out for years, too. Has no idea that his patient records are still just haaaanging around."

Crawthorne. John knew that name. Any doctor in England knew that name. Berkshire's Crawthorne? As in, the home of Broadmoor Hospital, the best known high-security psychiatric hospital in the country? Abruptly, he felt a little sick. Plenty of people left that hospital in good health, he was sure. But anyone discharged from there that caught the interest of the craziest, most sadistic evil genius he knew was probably less than normal. Probably much more _dangerous_ than normal. John went very still on the bed, thinking of all the ramifications of having a mentally unstable watchdog tailing Sherlock around.

"Oh, look at all the rusty gears turning!" Moriarty squealed, congratulating him brightly, "I think you might even know what's going on here, Johnny, from the look on your face. How refreshing!" Hitting the play button on the laptop, he explained quickly into a burst of static, "I needed some insurance in place before I brought you here, so I found Corbin. I poked and prodded, stirred up a few…issues of his in preparation. Multiple personality disorder, mild schizophrenia—you know. All the good stuff. Poor Corbin's got it well-buttoned up, but he can be plenty of fun when you know the triggers. I wanted only the best for our little get-together."

On the screen, the unclear image of Corbin Hobbes sat in a chair across from a man whose back was to the camera—his doctor, no doubt. There was no sound to the video, but the doctor held up a pad of paper in front of him. There was a column of dark lines on it which John assumed to be writing. From the length of the marks, they were single words. Onscreen, the doctor bent his head. His jaw was moving as he read down his list. And Corbin was moving, too. With every syllable out of the doctor's mouth, he stiffened up further, gripping the arms of his chair rigidly. Then he started pulling against them, and John realized that his hands were tied down. Seconds passed, with Corbin getting progressively wilder and wilder.

John wondered what the hell the doctor thought he was doing, provoking a patient like that. It was strictly against practices. Seeing as how the man was alone with an obviously volatile Corbin without an attendant to assist him, however, John concluded that the interview was most likely "off the record." And engineered by Moriarty, no doubt. He watched in impatient dread as the recording progressed; he was sure that the doctor had to be near the end of the paper by then. He was. John tensed as the faceless man said the last word, set the paper aside on the table to his left, and looked up at his patient. Presumably, he was checking the effects of his ministrations. Judging by the patient's harsh reactions throughout the recitation, John didn't think that—

Corbin broke the arms off of his wooden chair and used one jagged end to stab his doctor through the neck.

For several long moments, silence reigned in the airless little room.

"Quite the surprise, isn't he?" Moriarty mused at last from beside the desk.

He was fiddling with the small black box, the one with the wires, as he watched John stare, horrorstruck, at the newly-frozen laptop screen. The image had stalled just after the corpse of the doctor slumped to the ground. Only Corbin could be seen, a wild, hunted look in his posture and blood spattered all across his front. John ordered himself to look away from the gruesome sight, but it was hopeless. _He's with Sherlock_, was all he could think. _That crazy fucker is with Sherlock_ right now…

Moriarty seemed satisfied with his display's results. Fully aware of the ex-army doctor's alarm, the criminal hefted up the device in his hand, waving it about in front of the computer to draw John's attention. At least the sight snapped the spell of frozen panic building behind the doctor's unblinking eyes. As he felt the tense fog slip away, John glanced dazedly at the mechanical components. His thoughts were still too scattered to come to his aid. He vaguely thought he recognized a communications setup among the jumble, but then Moriarty clicked a side of the box open and tilted its contents out onto the desktop. Evidently, the small square was a container for tiny pieces of electronic equipment. Bugs or microphones, John reasoned.

Plucking one of the little disks up, Moriarty rubbed it between his fingers and told John distractedly, "I've had a dozen of these sewn into Corbin's clothes. I can track him and your _master_ all over the country, and as long as he's with Sherlock. And he'll _always_ be with Sherlock while he's on the case," the madman clarified. "I made sure to pick the clingy ones." Rolling his eyes conspiratorially, he smiled at John, all teeth and hunger while he let the plurality of his last word sink in. John just gazed up at him in growing horror. "Oh, and there are plenty more puppets waiting to take his place when Sherlock finishes with him—_exciting_ ones. I can talk to all of them through these little speakers, too." Indicating the screen and the bloodied sheet of paper on the dead doctor's side table, he boasted, "I know all the words on that list. Corbin won't know where my voice is coming from. He'll think that he's gone nutters aaaaall over again."

At once, Moriarty became deadly serious. "And if you don't behave, then I'll make sure that Sherlock is nearby when his nasty side slips out through the cracks."

Rigid where he lay on the bed, the ex-army doctor watched a haphazard collection of Moriarty's words carving channels across his brain. A genius he most certainly was not, but he wasn't completely stupid. All too well, he grasped the threat Moriarty was making against—not him. Against Sherlock. It didn't matter why anymore. All that was relevant to him was the fact that there was a homicidal limpet attached to his unknowing flatmate, ready to crack up and commit murder with one little push from the madman that had kidnapped John and tied him to a bed. And the unwitting enforcer wasn't alone. There were others to take his place should he fail or get pushed aside by the detective too early.

In a blinding flash of insight, John knew he was well and truly buggered.

It hadn't taken much.

_I'll make sure that Sherlock is nearby…_

_Multiple personality disorder, mild schizophrenia—you know. All the good stuff._

_…plenty more puppets waiting to take his place when Sherlock finishes with him—_exciting_ ones…_

Angrily, John tried to push aside the whispers of despair, fought to ignore the crumpling sensation in the vicinity of his willpower. He wasn't going to give in. Not to Moriarty. Not to _anyone_. He was a soldier, dammit. He'd been trained to deal with threats to his wellbeing, conditioned to weather difficult situations. He'd even grown accustomed to torture in the course of his service. It wouldn't sway him. There would be no bending on his part, no concessions. If Moriarty thought he was going to push John out of control with some two-bit horror story and sensational tripe, then he had another sodding think coming—

_And if you don't behave…_

_I'll make sure…_

_…that Sherlock is nearby…_

_…that Sherlock is…_

_…Sherlock…_

He couldn't do it.

God-fucking-damn it all, John just couldn't do it. The thoughts wouldn't go away—his anger wasn't enough. He was utterly at the mercy of another human being, and instead of infuriating him as it had in past situations, the knowledge shook him to his bones. Perhaps it was because it wasn't just him in the firing line—it was everything that had come to matter to him. The friend he valued above all else, the man whom he had built his life around, was balancing on the edge of disaster, and John couldn't even consider jeopardizing him. Numbly, he realized that the physical restraints weren't the only things binding him anymore. In a typical stroke of cruel genius, Moriarty had positioned his puppets to perfectly back him into a corner. Suddenly, to rebel was to invite harm onto his best friend, something that he was utterly unwilling to do. He couldn't have been more implicitly powerless than if the consulting criminal had made him a quadriplegic.

Admitting as much broke something within the blond man's depths. Abruptly, John's anger failed him. For the first time, the force that had carried him through a career in the military and three eventful tours in Afghanistan sputtered and gave out. And his will to fight left with it. Throughout his body, he felt the tension he'd held himself in release without his say so. His neck, his gut, his throat, his mind…even his arms and legs, constantly straining against his bonds since his awakening, went slack, and he didn't know how or why or what to do about it.

John felt a flutter of panic in his chest, which he pushed halfheartedly aside. It was a completely alien sensation, the lack of fire within him, but he recognized it well enough. He knew what was going on; he was giving up. He was losing control of the situation. Hell, he'd already lost it. And that just felt staggeringly wrong. Though he'd been captured before, he'd never truly accepted his own helplessness. He loathed the sensation. It was like something sharp and jagged had punched a dark, cold hole out of the center of his body.

Distantly, John watched a whirlwind of prospective curses fly by behind his eyes, finding all of them inadequate to express his current feelings. He couldn't see his way clear of the situation. There was nothing he could do to counteract Moriarty's maneuvering. Absolutely nothing. Again, the truth came to him: he was buggered. Unknowingly, the blond doctor's face twisted into a grimace of true misery. Defeat tasted bitter in the back of his throat as he let his head fall back with a soft whump against the mattress.

There was no use in arguing with himself. Inwardly, he knew that he could fight. He knew that he probably _should_ fight. But an overwhelming force inside of him decreed that he wouldn't. He simply would _not_ take that gamble. Not when it was Sherlock's life on the line.

Moriarty perked up at his slump, bouncing away from the desk to lean excitedly over his captive. "Something the matter, pet?" Holding up the transmitter mockingly, he suggested, "If you'd like a quick demonstration to show you how serious I am—"

"No." John hated him. Hated the weariness and resignation that he heard in his own voice when he interrupted. Hated that the sodding wanker knew perfectly well 'what was the matter' with him and made him admit it anyway. Hated how perfectly he had fallen into said wanker's neat little trap. Taking a deep, slightly unsteady breath, he turned away from his desperate study of the ceiling to face the insanity shining down at him from the beacons of Moriarty's dark pupils. In a voice that lacked all of his former fervor and ire, John asked Moriarty for the second time that night, "What do you want from me?"

In reply, a slow, predatory grin spread across the madman's face. Stuffing one hand in his pocket, Moriarty tossed the small electronic circle in his grasp flippantly over his shoulder. Glancing towards the laptop, bugs, and camera on the desk, he murmured, "I'm _sooooo_ glad you asked."

Instantly, he was back at the desk, sliding open a drawer and reaching for something stowed inside. John saw the flash of a knife blade as the criminal pulled out his find, but then Moriarty was on the bed, kneeling over him, and John forgot to be worried about what the lunatic meant to do with it. The tip of it was already being put to very good use against his throat.

"What I want, John, is Sherlock Holmes," Moriarty told him in a quiet, unnervingly even voice. "I want him with me, by my side where he was always meant to be. But I want him without _baggage_." The knifepoint pressed a little harder into John's neck, enough to draw blood, and the sound of its wielder's words dropped into darker, angrier ranges. "You…you _insects_ have marred him. Taken his perfection and perverted it to suit your own ends, your own pathetic little world. I won't let you ruin him any longer. I won't let you saddle him with your insipid, weak, useless idea of a _heart_ because without one you're afraid that he'd become a god to you!"

Moriarty was shouting, his ending roar deafening to John's close ears and the rage in his eyes twisting his expression into a grotesque parody of itself. Cutting off abruptly, though, he made a face and visibly pulled himself together, regaining the honeyed, silky-smooth tones that John found the most bewildering.

"I told you both what I would do if Sherlock continued to interfere back at the pool," he purred, flicking the knife away from John's neck and running the edge of it lightly down the doctor's chest from his collar bone. The blade parted his dress clothes as if they were fashioned from spider's silk. "The last time we met, I made Sherlock a promise, and now I intend to keep it." Drawing the knife up short, he held it perpendicular to John's body, the tip of it just pricking his skin and producing a small, perfect bead of blood. "What I _want_, John Watson…"

John swallowed. The knife was poised directly over his heart.

"Is to _burn_ you."

* * *

**A/N**

**I just feel like I should mention that Corbin and his fellow "puppets" are all completely fictional and in no way represent real-life people with mental disorders. There are waaaaay too many stigmas out there concerning certain medical conditions, and I AM NOT trying to feed into them. I just wrote with Moriarty in mind.**

**Very simply put, He is Mad. And Madness, when it comes to Moriarty, is a Very Scary Thing. Looking through that lens, everything he touches gets a little tainted. I wasn't writing Corbin, I was writing the world when it has a sadistic, terrifying genius at its reins. **

**So, I'm very, very sorry if you were offended on Corbin & Co.'s behalf, but that was entirely the opposite of what I was trying to emphasize.**

**I'm going to stop rambling now...**

**~Knyle B.**


	5. I Don't Need Your Help

**Hi all! I've reworked the end of this chapter a lot, so be warned! Also, it consequently got longer...sorry. ^^;**

**Thank you so much for your continued support, and I apologize in advance for any continuity/grammar/miscellaneous errors that there may be. It's not very edited yet (as in, not at all *heh*). **

**Disclaimer-You know it, I don't own it!**

**Please enjoy! All corrections/thoughts/random observations welcome!**

**Peace,**

** ~Knyle B.**

* * *

It took him all of six hours spent out of Baker Street to determine that Corbin Hobbes was being set up. Regrettably, he didn't get to start his investigation until after he—or rather, Mrs. Hudson—had managed to calm Hobbes down and get a nearly coherent story out of him, an ordeal which had swallowed up the day and then started nibbling on the evening. Worse, five of those six hours were lost to travel time; the man's university was slightly outside of London, and getting there was nearly tedious enough to put Sherlock off. But it didn't. On any other day, perhaps, he wouldn't have gone along, but then, considering the alternative—_Don't_! He didn't.

Although leaving was still tempting.

Very, very unfortunately, Corbin Hobbes had refused to depart and wait for Sherlock's results in a different location. He followed along behind Sherlock as the detective left his flat for the crime scene, scrambling into the same cab before Sherlock could close the door in his face. He was incredibly fast. Mindful of the manners that his absent frie—_don't_!—that he had been incessantly reminded of recently, Sherlock tried to reason with the little man, make the suggestion that he anticipate the case's conclusion elsewhere. He was proud of how rational he sounded. He didn't even let a hint of his irritation show through.

The cringing professor suddenly proved to have a stubborn streak, however. He most empathetically would not be leaving. Sherlock tried more polite persuasion. When that failed, he fell to arguing, cajoling, and finally being outright rude, but it was all for naught. Mr. Hobbes would not be departing, and that was that. There weren't any other options to dissuade him, so Sherlock let it be. A threat to drop the case was viable, but the detective knew that he would be bluffing. It was hard enough for him to avoid remembering that John was gone for another—_Do_ Not _Think About John_!—when he was occupied. Facing both an empty flat _and_ an empty mind would be utterly intolerable. Even more so than facing Hobbes, incredibly. Sighing in vexation, the tall brunette considered inciting a nervous breakdown and ditching the buffoon outside of a hospital. The man was exhibiting highly susceptible symptoms. But something held him back. It was suspiciously like a familiar voice in the back of his head chiding him firmly_, Not Good, Sherlock_, but he disregarded that possibility as fanciful.

The ride to Corbin's university couldn't have been more mind-numbing if the professor had brought a penny novel and read it aloud in the place of his constant chattering. Sherlock burst from the cab in relief when it halted on the night-darkened campus, leaving the fare for Hobbes in revenge. He wanted more time to put distant between them anyway. Striding up the walkway to the building where Hobbes had his lecture hall, he was pleased to see a distinct absence of flashing lights or crime scene tape. Somehow, by dint of an inept cleaning staff or the efforts of the perpetrator, the authorities had not been alerted. He would have an unmarred workspace.

Footsteps slapping against the pavement announced Corbin Hobbes' arrival as Sherlock tried the door, accompanied by the strained breathing of a mild asthmatic. "Sorry, sorry," Corbin wheezed, straggling to a halt and bending over with his hands on his knees. "I had to…you forgot to pay…cab."

"Mm." Rolling his eyes, Sherlock let the man believe what he would, surreptitiously tucking his lock-picking kit back into the inner pocket of his coat and opening the door.

Corbin's head jerked up. Gaping at the miraculously opened door, he trailed automatically after the detective as Sherlock slipped inside. Shutting the portal gently behind him—the man was meek to _entryways_, for crying out loud—he stared at the lock and mumbled, "I could've sworn that I locked it…"

That didn't even deserve an eye-roll. Devoting his energy to the much-more pertinent study of his surroundings, Sherlock noted several telling features at once. Turning full-circle in the center of the unlit foyer, he reevaluated his earlier assumption. Instead of crediting the crime's anonymity to the staff or murderer, he should have been taking into the account…

"You failed to mention that the building was essentially deserted."

"What?" Corbin walked up beside him and looked around himself like he had never seen his own workplace before. "Oh, yes, that." He laughed self-consciously, rubbing the back of his head as he explained, "Well, the department's been downsized a bit, and they're planning renovations in this part of the campus. I guess they just decided to keep a smaller crew on for the last of the semester. It's really just a few lecture classes and the blokes in janitorial. I'm all alone down on my floor."

Finishing with his study of the ceiling and corners, Sherlock turned to him with a frown. "There aren't any cameras. Why?"

Corbin looked up, craning his neck to try and see into the shadows even though Sherlock had just told him that there was nothing to see. "Really? Are you sure?" he questioned in surprise, again failing to realize that Sherlock had just told him a fact. As if he would even bother talking to the man unless he was absolutely sure that he _had_ to. "I knew that there were none down on my floor and in the back stairwell, since that's where Samantha always…" He choked to a halt, blinking furiously a few times, before being able to continue. "I didn't think that they'd be missing from the whole place. University's security rules, and all that…"

Feeling enormously relieved that the childlike man hadn't started weeping again, Sherlock made a noncommittal noise and brushed past him. He headed for the intersection of several hallways and a downwards stairway, the access points to the rest of the monolithic building. "Show me where it happened. And _don't_ touch anything."

Obediently, Hobbes guided him to his habitat, leading Sherlock down the stairs and into a maze of poorly lit and badly tended corridors that wound throughout the building's basement. Large lecture halls like his took up two stories to allow for raised seating, so his actual office was a floor below the door into his classroom, which was on the ground level. Why the man had not simply led him to the front doors of the lecture hall, confirmed to be the actual scene of the crime during their stilted conversation back at 221B, was beyond Sherlock. The entrance was mere yards down a hallway from the foyer, and using it would have taken a fraction of the time that Hobbes was wasting leading him through the equivalent of an academic sewer. Likely, the man was so set in his daily habits that he had automatically followed his morning route down to his private quarters instead of thinking practically.

Sherlock's thoughts paused.

For some reason, he felt a need to view himself objectively for a moment. He idly wondered if it was due to the fact that the person that normally did so was—_don't_—that the autopilot of his conscience appeared to be on hiatus, therefore requiring the function to be maintained manually. Stepping carefully around that conundrum, he skipped his usual first step of Premise and went on to Execution. Sherlock imagined that someone in his position would likely be expected to heave a long-suffering sigh or commiserate with their "Maker." He decided that convention was too much effort. Although his stupidity was annoying, it was hardly unexpected, so Sherlock let it pass without comment. He did _not_ mentally call the man an Idiot. That title had recently been reserved for one individual in particular. Incidentally, it had also ceased to register as an insult within his inner catalogue.

_Oh, of all the ridiculous_—

Aware that a particularly un-Idiotic imbecile had halted up ahead of him, Sherlock ground his teeth. It was as if his mind's rebellions were becoming something of a muscle spasm. _For God's sake_, he snapped exasperatedly at his inner workings, _I am trying to _work!_ Cease and desist with all mention of that man!_

A clinking sound drew Sherlock's attention away from his internal rage. Reaching grimly for his center, which had seemed uncharacteristically off-balance of late, he forced his jaw to relax and snapped his focus outward. There was no time to spare for frustrating, sentiment-ridden rubbish. There was the Work. Only the Work. Realigned on his purpose, Sherlock blinked and deleted the previous thirty seconds of his memory. That done, he relaxed back into his element, forcefully denying the possibility that he felt any sense of relief.

Hobbes had halted in front of his workspace's door and was fumbling for his keys. Impatiently, Sherlock waited for him to get on with it and took careful stock of their surroundings. The hallway was much like any other they'd been through: dark, dank, and decrepit. Its only discerning features were the restrooms midway down the hall and the ancient—and incongruously clean—water fountain on the wall between them. It was the most probable spot for Hobbes to have used whilst "washing up" after his rendezvous with Samantha.

With that in mind, he examined the entire area, slowly walking the route between the door to Hobbes' office and the WC. It being a public hallway, footsteps weren't likely to be very useful, but the low-usage of the area made spotting anomalies easier. Sherlock marked several items of interest on his way—partially obscured prints, mud variations and the locality of certain treads, placement of reflective surfaces, and a very enlightening stock of the ceiling's occupants—and sorted through several miscellaneous observations, all to be deleted—general state of disrepair, mopping pattern, etcetera—before reaching the door to the men's lavatory. And there he found one of the most intriguing details of all.

_Aha._

Data – Applicative:

_Two recurring pairs of muddy shoe prints stained on the tile. Conclusion: one to match Hobbes and another, female set for his mistress. _

_Extraneous: Evidently, the deceased not infected with common female obsession of daily shoe-changing. Also appears to have frequented Mr. Hobbes' office almost as often as he did in past week._

_Mud on soles of both Corbin's and Samantha's shoes consistent—dark, blackish-brown, and local to area. Evident throughout building and campus. Conclusion: footprints in dark brown mud belong to natives, other predictable presences._

_Extraneous: heavy rains in the area for the past week responsible for abundance of samples. _

_Mud anomaly: reddish-yellow hue, one trail made. Conclusion: brought in by someone foreign to the area. In addition, in piles of flakes, not evenly spread prints on floor. Was dried onto footwear when shed, not still wet as with the locals' trails. Secondary Conclusion: stranger's origin wet, but far enough away for mud to dry during travel. Also, mud left in inconsistent intervals between door of Corbin's office, restrooms, and leading away down the hall. Accompanied in that direction by repeated trails from Samantha. Memorized map of facilities seen on foyer wall places back stairwell twenty meters around hallway corner. Hobbes' previous mention of Samantha's use of the staircase supports Third Conclusion: back stairwell was source of entry. _

_General state of disrepair common throughout the building except for certain overly-shined metal and plastic surfaces in Corbin's hallway—witness, water fountain. Spatial arrangement of manufactured "mirrors" creates effect similar to periscope, allows for observation of corridor from around the corner leading to infamous stairway. Conclusion: area arranged for regular, clandestine observation._

_Reflective Anomaly: one "mirror" arrangement out of place. Five reflectors create incomplete system when viewed from floor. Angles could be complimentary to higher vantage point. Tentative Conclusion: method of overhead observation present. _

_More data required._

_Scan of upper region reveals bared pipework across ceiling. Excellent hiding place for spiders, dust, adventurous family of mice, and a hidden surveillance camera. Not eaten by mice; carefully tended like shined surfaces. Also high-end, professionally installed, and aided by aforementioned "mirrors." Alone—no others in the building. Conclusion: placed by someone other than university staff intending to watch occupants of hallway in secret._

_Latent Entry: drop of dried blood outside of restroom entrances. Shape indicates placement by vertical fall, not splatter. Conclusion: not produced by blow. If wounded, wound is minor. Regardless, blood was stable on surface long enough to drip, not be thrown. Location of droplet in front of water fountain, but off-centered. Closer to women's restroom. Slump of shape indicates that original surface was in motion, going towards women's lavatory when droplet shed. Corbin utilized men's—claimed to see no one entering or leaving. Conclusion: unknown source of blood went into women's. If attacker of deceased, went into WC to hide while Hobbes made trip from men's to office—bleeding or bloody due to attack on mistress. Possibly hid within WC before attack as well._

Data collection complete.

_Logged_.

Data – Irrelevant:

_State of lower floor even more deplorable than rest of building. Evidence of caretaking inconsistent with cleaning person in normal physical condition. Conclusion: janitor/handyman has restricted range of motion in right arm and left side of neck, respiratory complications likely, pushing seventy at least. Explains dismal state that floors have been allowed to descend to and why pipework on the ceiling looks due to collapse._

Further collection of data superfluous. Previous entry unnecessary.

_Operation terminated. Preceding data deleted_.

"Uh, um, were you—I've got the door—"

_About time_. Sherlock rose up from his crouch, distancing his nose from the floor that had previously been mere inches away. He had done all he could for the hallway. Now that the crime scene was _open_… Turning on one expensively-clad heel, he swept past Corbin's gape-mouthed stammering without a sideways glance. A daring feat of bravery on Corbin's part, attempting to use the keys to his office with such authority. Sherlock would be surprised if the man didn't collapse from mental exertion. Even nerves of steel could only be expected to stand so much. A small smile tried to surface on his face, and he found himself instinctively looking to the side, wanting to share—_He's. Not. Here. Moving on!—_and saw a bloody handprint on the side of the door.

"I, uh, t-that's mine," Corbin stuttered from behind him. "It's from when I…found S-Samantha. She was—I tried to check…"

"Oh, for God's sake, shut up and stop thinking before you injure yourself," Sherlock snapped. "And stay outside the door," he added sharply, seeing the sweaty pallor of the man's face and the shakiness in his hands. The moron was already ruining clues standing in the corridor. If he fainted inside the room, there was no telling the damage he might do to the evidence.

Turning his back on the pitiful creature in the doorway, Sherlock got back to business. Hobbes' office took only a precursory inspection. It was obvious that the intruder entered and exited through it by the patches of reddish-yellow mud he found, but there was no other visible evidence. Fingerprints and additional forensic analysis would be helpful—as long as Anderson wasn't allowed to interfere—but for the moment, he slipped his gloves on and progressed to the other room. The lecture hall. And purportedly home to the body of the murdered Samantha.

It was dark within the hall. Sherlock stepped just inside the door and stopped, easing the door shut behind him. He didn't bother to turn the lights on at first. He put his other senses to work first, stretching them out in all directions. As acute and precise as all of his faculties were, there was the off chance that what he saw could interfere with the information that his other senses were collecting. His eyes, disconcerting to others because of their appearance, could also disconcert him. The last doctor that he had ever deigned to visit—outside of one singular individual that came to permanently visit him—_Drat. Not again. No. NO MORE_.—had pronounced him to have 6/.6 eyesight. It was the highest measurement that his machines could take.

Sherlock knew that their findings were inaccurate. He didn't see 6/.6. When he focused, he saw even _better_ than that. It was part of why he was so good at what he did…unless he allowed his vision to override his auditory, olfactory, and other senses. It didn't matter in his day to day life, but on a case…on a case, he relished the challenge of balancing the entirety of his capabilities in order to achieve his goal. Full sensory overload. Disorienting in the extreme, but indescribably useful for detective work. Therefore, he paused in the darkness, delaying a full devotion of his attention. He wanted to give the rest of his body a chance to catch up to his mind and eyes. Every smell, every sound was detected, identified, and catalogued before he reached out a hand for the light switch.

Even with the overheads flickering on, the lecture hall was dim. Evidently the desk lamps placed at regular intervals at the desks weren't only for show. Unbothered by the artificial dusk, Sherlock stepped away from the office door and slowly circled the raised platform that the professor's desk was mounted on. The body of Samantha lay crumpled beside the toppled chair, her limbs contorted and bloody. Flicking on a few nearby lights, the detective directed them to shine on the platform and studied the area intently, going over it with such razor-like focus that it made his earlier inspection in the hallway seem like a glance. Data streamed into his brain so fast that he didn't consciously try to track it, focusing instead on catching the conclusions that his mental processes automatically threw out like lightning.

He was dimly aware of what went on in the background of his thoughts—

_Young woman, early twenties, average looking features offset by well-tended body. Dressed formally, jewelry excessively fashionable, but sparse. Shoes several years old: expensive but repaired. All clothing carefully chosen to last and remain reasonably in style, also carefully preserved. _

—but only the most useful of information actually registered:

_Graduate student. Ambitious with a meager but growing financial foundation. Affair with Hobbes was a power play; she was indulging a power-hungry and controlling personality. Likely offended many people. Killed for revenge, Hobbes framed?_

_Current data inconclusive. More required._

His further analysis went on much the same. Progressing quickly from the floor of the hall to the platform, Sherlock examined every aspect of the scene from as many angles as possible without leaving a trace of his own activities. Hobbes, thankfully, stayed out in the meantime. Sherlock could only hope that he followed directions and didn't touch anything or panic and do something even more inexcusably stupid. He wouldn't have much more time to be imbecilic, thankfully. Sherlock was nearly ready to quit the place; the complete picture was beginning to form in his head with all the usual clarity and alacrity. It seemed his client actually was being set up.

_Pity. Could have gotten rid of him if I had to hand him over to the police._

_"Sherlock..."_

He almost let the familiar, disapproving voice make him feel guilty before he realized who it rightfully belonged to. Then he was suddenly very, very focused on determining which of the marks on the murder weapon could best be used to identify the killer. No time for inner exchanges between frie—inner exchanges when there was Work to attend to.

The next few minutes required his complete mental absorption. Soon, all there was left to deduce from the crime was the color of the killer's eyes—a jest. But he really could glean no more from the scene than he already had. It was time to go and collect Corbin. Sighing gloomily, Sherlock straightened up from his crouch beside the body and fiddled with his gloves. He was just taking his first step down the platform's stairs when something small and glinting caught his eye. There was something reflective down in the far recesses of the desk's foot space.

Returning to the worktop immediately, the detective crouched and carefully reached for his find. His fingers returned grasping a small, circular device. Its black matte finish had been marred by a small scratch, revealing the silver metal underneath for a mere millimeter or two. If he were anybody else, he would have missed seeing it completely. But of course, he wasn't. Blindly leaping down off the platform without upsetting a single object, he strode over to a lamp and examined the little disk.

_Interesting_, he mused, noting the four wire brackets abutting from the edge of one of is faces and the small strands of brown thread still clinging to them.

His thoughts were interrupted by a faint but unmistakable tapping sound from behind the door of Corbin Hobbes' office. The dimwit had struck, Sherlock observed as he scowled. Without further ado, he enclosed the little device inside one of the small envelopes that he kept handy for that purpose. Then he slipped the parcel inside the outer pocket of his coat and left the lecture hall, turning off and returning all of the lights that he'd utilized to their original position as he went. The door of the office clicked shut behind him when he entered, startling the fidgeting figure sitting at the cluttered desk. Hobbes dropped the pen that he had been agitatedly tapping and nearly fell out of his chair with the force of his surprise.

"O-oh! You're back!"

Sherlock didn't ask why he apparently needed to be made aware of that fact. "You are not in the hallway."

"What?"

Sherlock pointedly did _not_ roll his eyes. His expression of displeasure firmly in place, he reproved the small, tittering man, "I told you not to touch anything."

Corbin looked down, seeming to panic a little at the sight of the chair. "Oh. I didn't think—"

"Yes, that is abundantly clear," Sherlock interjected drily.

Corbin flushed a bright scarlet, vivid enough to be seen even in the relative darkness. He seemed to search for words for a few moments, which Sherlock spent going to the door and stepping out into the hallway. A scuffle of motion betrayed the professor's hasty rise and rush out the door after him. Sherlock ignored him, walking back the way they'd come in and pulling out his phone.

"I'm sorry," Corbin muttered lamely, at last—and unfortunately—regaining his grasp of speech. Catching sight of the mobile in Sherlock's grip, he raised his eyebrows in comical surprise and actually _pointed_. "What's that for?"

"Communication," Sherlock replied unhelpfully.

"Yes, well, um, who are you going to be communicating _with_?"

"The police." Sherlock trotted up the stairs, listening to Hobbes' gasp of shock turn into pants of exertion. The man was dangerously close to an asthma attack. _Too much trouble_. Sherlock slowed down for him.

"B-but why are you c-calling the police?" the little man cried, aghast, as he crested the stairs. He was all but twitching with his anxiety. "I came to you because—I told you that it would look—"

"The police are paid to investigate further than how something _looks_," Sherlock cut in smoothly, barely grimacing as the mostly undue praise passed his lips. "You'll be probably be no more than a person of interest."

Corbin subsided, and he dialed in the anonymous tip line of the local force. Raising a hand to demand the man's silence, he slipped into a heavy, obtuse brogue with rasping vowels when the operator picked up. Adopting a tone of barely controlled panic, he babbled into the phone, "Ahllo? Ahllo?"

"Hello, sir. What would you like to report?"

"Yea, Ah—um—Ah'd lahk tae raeport ah murdah," Sherlock stammered, drawing easily on the more recent experience he'd had with frightened stuttering to authenticate his act. He'd have carried it off flawlessly regardless, but it was nice to think that he hadn't allowed himself to be stuck with someone who was _totally_ useless.

"Where are you, sir?"

Sherlock rattled off the address, beginning to walk quickly, pulling Hobbes along by the elbow as he headed for a side exit that his mental map of the building showed opened into a secluded alleyway. "Et's aen dae basement," he added, opening the door soundlessly and shoving Corbin through into the predawn light awaiting them. "Theah be a woman een dae hall. Shae's bain—oh, Lord, et's so ohrrible." His voice broke perfectly. "Plaese come. Ah—Ah've got tae go naow."

He hung up on the operator's protests and put the phone away, glancing over to see Corbin gaping up at him. He walked, and the little brown personage followed dumbly after, an unwanted stray. Feeling the weight of an inordinate amount of stupid pressing into his back, Sherlock stopped before the mouth of the alley. Corbin jolted but continued his gawping when the tall brunette turned on him, demanding irritably, "Oh, what _now_?"

Corbin blinked. "You…you're like a…actor."

Sherlock sent his eyes heavenward, yanking the threads of his shredding patience back into place, and checked for passerby on the sidewalk that the alley opened up to. Thanks to the ungodly time of night—morning—no one was around, so he led Hobbes out and to a busier thoroughfare. Hailing the solitary cab braving the small hours, he used Hobbes' distraction to send a text to Lestrade. He didn't need to be surreptitious, but another conversation with the diminutive, toady professor was likely to drive him to violence. Therefore, he typed out his message in his pocket while he reluctantly preceded Corbin into the cab.

To: G. Lestrade

_'Murder in the basement lecture hall of university building. Female student. A professional made the hit and framed her professor. Will need someone acceptable in charge of police action. Care for a trip to the country?'_

The agonizingly slow cab ride began. Corbin's chatter gained speed proportionally with the car; the farther they were away from the curb and the faster they were going on the roadway, the quicker and more inanely he talked. It was as if his feet's contact with the sidewalk had been preserving his last remnant of semi-intelligence, and severing the tie was pulling all of the hinting aptitude straight out of him. More than ever, he looked on the verge of emotional collapse: shaking, pale, sweating, stammering, twitching… Perhaps leaving him alone so long near the site of his dead girlfriend's murder had been ill-advised. _John would know for certain—God_ Damn _It_! _Enough_! Sherlock reminded himself that he was there to investigate a murder, not commit one.

Thankfully, Lestrade was feeling accommodating of his need for distraction. Sherlock had set his phone to vibrate and was able to carry out an undetected conversation with the DI in the midst of Corbin's blind rambling. The policeman wasn't much for company, but at that point Sherlock would have taken a _cat_ over the mad—mad? Where had he gotten that idea?—little man in the cab with him.

Buzz.

From: G. Lestrade

_'Please tell me you're joking.'_

Sherlock smirked.

To: G. Lestrade

_'I'm joking.'_

When he was riled, the Yarder was even faster at texting than J—most people who had no use for their thumbs or three non-index fingers while typing. Sherlock resolved to irritate him first in the future before ever trying to communicate with him on a case. The man was insufferably slow to respond otherwise. A full five minutes, sometimes.

Buzz.

From: G. Lestrade

_'I only meant for you to say it if it was the truth.'_

To: G. Lestrade

_'Not what you said.'_

Buzz.

From: G. Lestrade

_'Smart-arse.'_ He could almost hear the Detective Inspector's weary sigh in the ellipses. _'…All right, which university are you at?'_

Sherlock quickly replied with the address that the _murder_ was at, leaving his whereabouts out of the equation. It was usually poor practice to let the police know that you'd been to a crime scene before them and taken some of the evidence. And he was just not up to another drug's bust. If Anderson came within a hundred feet of his home or his skull, he was likely to start plotting homicide. Which, amazingly, he had managed to mostly avoid over the sadly-numerous years of their acquaintance.

A sudden silence in the cab made him look up from his hidden phone in surprise. The incessant babbling had ceased. He raised an eyebrow at the other man's graceless slump on the other seat and wondered idly if he should check for any medical concerns to explain it—and then if he could get the other man to pay the cabbie for any distasteful messiness if he were ill. The actual reason for Hobbes' loss of composure became abundantly clear a moment later, however, and he sighed gustily. The empty words had been promptly replaced by breathy, snuffling snores. If he were a believer in religion, he would have wondered what he had done to deserve a day—no, two days—spent in Hell. And the following days he had to look forward to…_No_!

Lestrade was taking an age to reply. He would have to revise his earlier assessment of the effects anger had on him. Sherlock became aware that he was scowling rather more than dealing the inconvenient DI merited. Feeling even more vicious in reaction, he snapped his eyes downwards and jabbed out a message on his phone.

To: G. Lestrade

_'By the way, Anderson is not allowed. Feel free to find someone competent to replace him at any time.'_

He went to gazing accusingly at the passing countryside out his window, brooding grimly about whatever circumstances had occurred before his birth and led to his adulthood being spent drowning within a raging sea of incompetents. Einstein had spoken on the trials of surviving school as a genius. He had remained explicitly silent on the tactics one might use to endure all the trying times thereafter. Sherlock doubted that he would have taken any advice the man gave, anyway. Einstein's great mind had been imprisoned within an all but average body. The detective's had the advantage—or burden, depending on the situation—of near perfect sensory input as well. Also, it would seem that Albert Einstein had a much greater capacity for forgiveness when fools or human error were involved.

Buzz.

From: G. Lestrade

_'Not your call, mate. Bit snippy without John around, aren't you?'_

For a moment, Sherlock seriously entertained the notion of chucking the phone out the window. He settled for deleting both the message and his memory of it and decided to ignore the device completely for the remainder of the two-and-a-half-hour ride.

To: John W.

_'Did you get your phone back yet? Where are you?'_

He stared in outrage down at his rebellious fingers, watching the small "sending" icon on the screen turn to "sent." It would seem that his body had passed beyond all the bounds of reason. Sherlock growled and dropped the phone on his lap like it had burned him. Soon he would be stark raving, and then what could he say when Donovan called him a psychopath? _'Yes, and happily so, thank you. When shall we schedule my next mental breakdown?'_

Looking so fulminous that the cabbie flinched when he saw his expression in the rearview mirror, Sherlock leaned with his elbow against the window edge and glared at the steadily-lightening view. To Hell with waiting for _him_ to come home. He would never think of the man again. If he turned up on Thursday evening, cheers. If he didn't, so be it. Sherlock wasn't going to be surprised or affected one way or another.

Several minutes passed in silence, the only comments made being a few sporadic snorts or hitches in Corbin's breathing while he slept.

To: John W.

_'Remarkable that a slightly daunting woman has managed to deprive an ex-soldier of one of his belongings. Should we recommend that she enlist? The army _has_ found itself rather bereft recently.'_

There was no way on earth that he was going to look down to incredulously watch his message go out again, Sherlock decreed to himself. He was _done_. That was all the pandering to his weaknesses that his flimsy will was going to do. His earlier plan reentered his mind, even more tempting than before. He actually placed his finger over the window controls before tossing the mobile on the seat beside him. To go through with such a display would be admitting how irate he was, after all, and thus give the reasons behind the sodding emotion more power. It was much better to just delete the whole incident and continue despising the scenery.

Sherlock happily returned to glaring. If he were fanciful, the detective would have imagined the iciness of his gaze as a physical thing, reaching out beyond the cab window and wilting all of the dreary grass parading before his eyes. He truly hated travelling. It swallowed time with abandon, a wormhole that made productivity and accomplishment vanish into the bottomless cracks of the universe. And provided all too much time for worthless ruminating. He likened such foolishness to the ridiculous, spineless character in the insipid tragedies that society insisted on immortalizing, pining after the absent, disgustingly heroic lead. It was getting to be too offensive to bear.

The streets of London were so welcome that he nearly grinned when the cab passed onto them. He couldn't wait to be home and to send the tweed-enclosed limpet snoring across from him on his way. Joh—he would have worried about the surely astronomical fare that their ride had rung up, but as Hobbes would be paying, he saw no need. The desire to leave the distasteful cab was making his knee bounce up and down at high speed; the volume of early-morning traffic was going to drive him to distraction. He knew every street and alleyway in the city, and could calculate down to the second how long their current rate of travel would take to reach their destination. Currently, he would reach Baker Street faster if he was on foot than if he continued by car.

Not a bad idea, actually.

Reaching ahead, he tapped the glass partition and lied to the driver in an ingenuous whisper, "Looks like my friend here wasn't up to our evening's entertainment after all. Think you could drop us off at his place?" He gave the address of a cheap hotel in a reasonably survivable part of the city, expecting the campus cabbie to have no working knowledge of London and thus fail to recognize that there was no apartment building or housing on the spot. He wasn't disappointed. The cabbie gave his consent, and Sherlock favored him with a wide, false smile. "Thanks, mate."

He wasn't bothered in the least about abandoning Corbin. The man had enough money on him to take a room, feed himself, or catch a train at the nearby station to go back to the university if he so chose. Sherlock's number was on the website if he felt the unfortunate need to call, and the professor had already found his way to Baker Street all too easily the previous day. That was as far as the detective felt a need to concern himself. At the next stoplight, he opened the door to let himself quietly out of the car.

"What are you doing?"

A surprisingly firm grip closed around his upper arm. With a sigh, Sherlock shut the door and slumped back into the seat, shaking Hobbes' hand off and holding up one of the long corners of his coat explicatively. "Coat was stuck in the door," he mumbled, looking wistfully at the sidewalk as the light turned and the cab pulled ahead. "Bothersome."

Corbin nodded understandingly, relaxing back into his side of the cab. "Oh, I get that. My sister, Tabitha, used to wear these long skirts all the time. Made it bloody awful to try and get in a car with her. Always had to double check that we weren't trailing cotton when we went on a road trip. I bet you'd like Tabitha, Mr. Holmes. She's really very clever…"

Sherlock cringed back from the blatant mention of normality as if it were an infectious disease, looking in desperation around himself for an escape route. Thankfully, another stoplight was going red up ahead, and they were in the side lane. As the cab slowed down in preparation for the stop, he reached for the door as innocuously as he could. Corbin was still prattling, growing increasingly distracted as he reminisced about his frankly horrible-sounding sister, and Sherlock wasted no time taking advantage. Without a moment more of hesitation, the detective cracked the door opened and slipped out, hitting the ground at a fast walk and slamming his escape hatch shut in the startled professor's face with a sense of supreme satisfaction.

Which was shortly cancelled by vexation. Though Corbin hadn't followed him onto the streets, he knew exactly where Sherlock was going. Baker Street was the first place that the insufferable clod would go, once he sorted things out with the misled cabbie. If Sherlock wanted to preserve his piece of mind—and he truly, dearly did—going back to the flat was out of the question. He growled to himself at the fact, abruptly changing directions. If he couldn't go home, Angelo's was nearby. The big Italian would be happy to lend him his back room while he waited out the threat that the frumpy intellectual—and if that wasn't a dubious estimation of the man, he didn't know what was—and tried to accomplish some actual _thinking_. Blast Hobbes for depriving him thus far.

Sherlock's hand, in the process of fisting within his pocket, encountered an alien presence. His discovery from beneath the desk. That was something that might keep him busy. If he was going to be exiled from Baker Street for the foreseeable future, then he might as well do something worthwhile with himself. Determining the purpose and origin of the piece of electronics would be a start. Lengthening his stride, he all but flew to Angelo's. As usual, the big man was overjoyed to oblige him, and led him smiling to the back room. Minutes later, with a steaming plate of unavoidable pasta sitting at his elbow, Sherlock was perching at the desk that Angelo used for totaling inventory.

Glad to finally have his mind diverted, he pulled the evidence envelope out, reaching into another pocket for his compact tool kit. Opening and flattening the kit on the work surface, he placed the little black disk in the center of the pool of yellow light cast by the desk lamp. It was hardly the flat's brightly lit kitchen, but it would have to do. He could lament the working conditions after he actually attended to the Work itself.

The little black disk had completely arrested his attention for the time being—what _bliss_. He rolled his eyes at the mental annotation. It was not the time to start _that_. Ordering his sarcasm to shut up, he reverted his focus back to the task at hand. The Work. Nothing but the Work. At first examination of the piece of electronics, he had seen nothing of obvious note aside from the fibers. Still, the little device itself was extraordinary by nature. He'd never seen anything of its make before. That alone made it special. But to the facts: obviously, it was a bug—though not an ordinary bug.

Sherlock slipped gratefully into his growing inquisitiveness, letting his drive to _know_ push aside all the other unwelcome avenues of inquiry echoing in his head. Pulling a miniature screw driver out of its resting place, he carefully pried the disk's casing off and peered at its insides under the portable magnifier that he also carried. Judging from the electronics, which he identified to be a tiny receiver, transmitter, and, most interestingly, a speaker, it was a sort of radio. Signals could be received from an outside source and broadcast through the miniscule apparatus. But from whom? To whom? Why would such a small transmitter be necessary?

"Mr. Holmes?"

Stiffening at the hesitant voice behind him, he turned, taking in the young waitress standing nervously at the doorway. He'd heard the other person's entrance and hoped that she—her gender was apparent from her walk—would see that the room was occupied and move on. Alas, she stayed. Sherlock thought darkly on that and his recent misfortunes as he took in the visitor.

_Student. Close to younger sister. From money. Recently accumulated enormous debt through boyfriend's illicit activities. Faced with blackmail or kidnapping. _Oh, wonderful. His luck wasn't dismal enough already?_ Beaten up the day before—likely by a loan shark's enforcer. State of terror too strong to be self-concerned; sister in trouble. _He should dismiss her right off. Based on his other case, he'd say that he'd dealt with enough nonsense of late. It wouldn't do to take on a situation that promised even more, would it?_ Too early for shift to start. Not a resident—Angelo lives upstairs alone. He was on his phone when he left me in here. Undoubtedly calling her—she asked him to let her know when I came around._ _Large sum of petty cash in her pocket, all she has left. Wants to hire certain, last-ditch services. Timid, passive nature, so nonviolent. Hence…Looking for a Consulting Detective._

He lifted a discerning eyebrow. As far as diversions went, her case would be painfully simple, should he choose to look into it. Kidnappings and blackmail were rarely worth his time, and even less deserving of his effort. They held no appeal for him—no elegance at all. It was a good thing he wasn't taking the case. Without a doubt, it would make for an utterly dreary puzzle—hardly a puzzle at all.

…And yet, he had failed to send its wide-eyed bearer speedily on her way.

Sherlock frowned at the unwelcome fact. He'd meant to. He was sure that he'd decided on it several observations ago. But there she was. Why would he…oh, forget it. He had time. Far too much time. Another case, even a dull case, would help to burn the hours. Sherlock told himself that lowering his standards was a far better fate than being lowered himself to the troublesome state that boredom reduced him to, without much success. He had a sinking feeling that it was all going to get worse before it got better, too. Realizing where the day was going, he sighed and swept the bug back into its envelope. "Who do you owe the money to?"

She staggered back against the door frame, gawking like a fish and bugging her eyes out in a surprisingly accurate depiction of any amphibian Sherlock might bother to think of. "W-what—h-how—"

Oh, not _again_. He was in absolutely no mood for more mindless theatrics. Gritting his teeth, Sherlock tucked both the envelope and his toolkit away and stood abruptly. "You came to me because I'm the only one who knows _how_," he told her in a dangerously smooth murmur, at once soothing and threatening. She froze in response, all her jabbering halted, and he deemed the effort of communication a success. "And if you wish to make use of my methods, I suggest that you begin explaining all the pertinent facts to me _at once_ so that I can commence helping your dear sister."

Five minutes later, he had a full explanation of Miss Isabella Pilozzi and her sister Ana's troubles—and a very enamored, much-too-awed admirer. Ana's misadventures during a clubbing trip over a school break had resulted in her association with a rather infamous member of the London black market. A romance between Isabella and that member's son followed through some convoluted and generally unsound chain of reasoning. The brief spurt of passion had dissolved into predictable nastiness and terminated, but not before information of significant value had changed hands between the son and Isabella, as well as considerable sums of money. Ana, through some misunderstanding, had sided with the criminals in blackmailing her sister. What she didn't know was that her villainous "comrades" were buying her sister's cooperation through threats against her own mind-numbingly docile and gullible person.

Isabella had to submit to their demands before they decided that Ana was more useful to them dead. She told Sherlock that she would prefer the threat nullified before then. There was also a lot of sentimental gibberish that he took care to delete before it had even strayed past his filters, having had more than enough of that pale-and-trembling rubbish from another small—petite, in Miss Pilozzi's case—quaking personage. If possible, Isabella Pilozzi seemed even more afflicted than Corbin Hobbes. And that was a masterful feat, indeed. The signs of a true mental imbalance were peering through numerous cracks in her persona, threatening to crumble the walls entirely if she endured much more stress. A normal person would probably call it a justifiable bout of nerves, predictable hysteria during a trying situation. Sherlock, on the other hand, equated such emotional messes to full psychotic breakdowns. It would be payment in itself to prevent any further exposure to that drivel, he decided.

Flicking off the desk lamp, Sherlock swept out into the London morning, shoving aside all his meddlesome ponderings about absentee flatma—imbecilic professors and exasperated policemen. Another case was good. Another case meant brainwork. And, though he might refuse to acknowledge his motivations for it, it was one day in particular when he _needed_ brainwork. However pitiful it was.

His complete lack of standards made him grit his teeth as Angelo waved at him out of an upstairs window. Seeing as the man had been utterly congenial to his abrupt and unexplained presence on his doorstep at seven in the morning, Sherlock returned the gesture with a curt nod as he left company behind. Although not as far behind as he'd hoped. With an odd sense of inevitability, he noticed that he was closely followed by a furtive Isabella Pilozzi. He ground his teeth. It was only natural that his clients of late would have more in common than their distressing demeanors. He would be mad before the morning was out, he _knew_ he would be, and he was still taking the case. Amazing what desperation did to one's criterions. Sherlock probably would have gone with the tiny Italian woman for a crime of passion, at that point. A part of him was furious that he'd sunk so far.

The rest of him didn't care.

He fumed at himself throughout the entire day, barely registering the self-turned anger as he tracked down leads, cornered informants, built a nest-egg of insurance material, and orchestrated a quiet extraction of the oblivious Ana Pilozzi. He was all over London in mere hours, haring about as best he knew how—and all to shake off his unblinking, unwavering shadow. It was startling, how well she kept up. He'd lose her for blocks, but then there she was again, strolling up to his side on a street corner. It was unnatural. People weren't meant to catch up to him. He didn't like it. It was only tolerable to have a shadow—one, specific, unlikely shadow with an outright Idiotic determination to uphold a career whilst simultaneously serving as his right hand—and that shadow didn't _catch_ up. He _kept_ up.

_Damn it._

Sherlock went about the day's business with a dogged relentlessness that had the Pilozzi case cleared up before evening. Once he had the sisters safely stored away in the closest hotel he could find, he beat a hasty retreat. Isabella Pilozzi was ecstatic at his success; he only narrowly evaded her attempts to "thank" him by ducking into a side alleyway near the hotel. It let out onto a busy street. He was just turning back towards Angelo's when something short and blurred and sweaty cut into his peripheral vision.

Corbin Hobbes.

He averted most of the incoming, banal twaddle by walking on, so fast that the waddling asthmatic was too out of breath to prattle. Their direction was homeward. Seeing as his avoidance measures had failed epically, Sherlock saw no point in straying from home any longer. Inwardly, he cursed his stupidity. How could he have neglected to check around himself for danger, he absolutely didn't know. Thanks to his thoughtlessness, after just getting rid of one pesky imbecile, he was saddled with another. It truly was as if all his endeavors were meant to be carried out in Hell. Sherlock was beyond furious, and more than finished with niceties. He made straight for Baker Street at top speed, seething the whole way.

He slammed the front door open and stormed up the stairs, gesturing choppily in the face of Mrs. Hudson's startled greeting. It was as explicative as he dared to be with her—he did try to draw a line at verbally dissecting landladies, especially when it was his…well, _only_ when it was his. Telling her to fix his simpleton escort with the agitated motion, he stormed up to his bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Hobbes could fend for himself. He was not entertaining the trite professor another moment. The latch on his door made a satisfying click as he threw the bolt home. He'd installed a proper lock to keep Lestrade and Mycroft out, but it worked on dimwits just as well.

Turning his back on the door and all thoughts of his intruder, he threw himself into his desk chair in a huff. Yanking off his scarf and gloves, he tossed them aside and began unbuttoning his coat. He was just about to cast it to the floor to join his other pieces of outerwear when something crinkled in a pocket. The bug. Eagerly, he fished the little envelope out and swiped a space clear on his cluttered desk. Ignoring the crashes of falling equipment, he flicked on the two lights he kept for just such a purpose and resumed his investigation with the bug laid out in two halves before him.

He refreshed his last question, the one that he'd been pondering before Isabella Pilozzi's interference, and switched his mind back to the professor's case. Why would such a small transmitter be necessary? Sherlock sat back, clasping his hands together under his chin in his customary pose of contemplation. Why indeed? Covert dealings came to mind, but then the item's presence under the blindingly dull professor's desk became inexplicable. He was not the sort to engage in clandestine operations of any sort—it truly was a wonder that his wife had not detected his infidelity. The only thing the man was slightly capable of hiding was the state of extensive mental agitation that he was constantly under. And even at that he was terrible.

And then there were the brackets and fibers. The speaker had been sewn in to some sort of brown fabric previously. The professor did have an excessive affection for tweed…but again, what end would wearing such a transmitter serve? Also, there was his young paramour to consider. Could she have been the source of the device? She hadn't been wearing any brown. Had she lost it at a previous time, then? Any vigorous activity could have dislodged it, and if they…_exercised_ on his desk often, there had been plenty of chances for her to deposit it.

It was a dead end. He lacked sufficient data to form conclusions and was disinclined to guess. Heaving a sigh, Sherlock stored all of the information that he'd collected with his other knowledge of the case and tucked it away. Lestrade would have more substantial offerings for him eventually, once files had been pulled and forensic evidence tested with proper equipment—and as long as Anderson wasn't allowed to interfere, it might even be accurate. Preferably, the detective would be granted an official chance to gather evidence and test it. That would ensure reliable results. He'd had to content himself with police work before, though, and could work with it if required. Under protest.

Sherlock leaned back in his seat, tipping his head back against the top of the chair back and closing his eyes. Corbin had likely remembered how to speak by then and holed up downstairs with Mrs. Hudson far-too-freely-given hospitality. Not for the first time, Sherlock cursed every miserable impulse that had let him to accept the man's case, however stimulating it had first seemed. Under normal circumstances, he would have been ecstatic by then, his mind whirring and swirling out in all directions, processing any and all probable reasons for the speaker, mapping the routes of the footprints in the hallway, sorting through the professor and his late student's histories…but it was time to admit that the case did not fall under normal circumstances. There were several very important things missing besides his excitable mood. Actually, only one thing. The most important thing of all.

To: John W.

_'Career notwithstanding, your current activities do not take precedence over a murdered female student and the attempted framing of her lover-professor. The city of Dublin and the institution of medical conferences will assuredly outlast our chances to catch the murderer. Come home.'_

He set the mobile down beside the dissembled bug with an air of resignation. _Sod it all_. Sherlock felt a strange mixture of outrage, disgust, and—most incongruously—warmth as he grudgingly accepted the inevitable. He missed his friend. There was no use denying it any longer. John was gone, and he didn't like it. He didn't like it At All. The detective sighed mournfully into the oppressive, judgmental quiet of the room. So much for self-control. For the first time in his life since he'd learned how to speak in complex sentences, he was having trouble with impulse control. It was not a happy feeling. It gave him the sensation that he was drowning, a sure warning sign. He was more than in trouble. He was in for more than misfortune. He was afflicted. He had developed a malady to put all previous ailments to shame. Or, to put it in a familiar ex-soldier's vernacular, he was buggered.

bzzzz. bzzzzz.

Sherlock stilled, straining his ears. It was faint, so faint that even his keen hearing barely heard—

bzz.

Bolting upright and snapping his eyes open, Sherlock grabbed for his toolkit. His phone, its satellite access presumably hindered by the thick cloud of _stupid_ emanating from the clown downstairs, had taken a good while to send out its message. It was still sending, actually, judging by the icon on its screen.

It was also sitting directly beside a miniature, highly sensitive transmitter.

Taking up a tiny metal pointer, Sherlock teased at the insides of the bug curiously, locating the reception components. The phone's signals were still broadcasting. It was possible that the bug was picking them up. If he could just see it the next time it made a noise…

bzzz. bzzzz.

_Yes_. There, in the very rear of the receptor. A piece was loose, and the vibrations from it were the source of the nearly inaudible noise that he'd heard. Poking and prodding with the pointer, he toyed with the little part. It turned out to be looser than he thought; it flipped up and out of its casing as he fiddled. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, going to pluck up the gleaming piece of metal. As he did, his eyes strayed downwards, flickering across the rest of the bug. Then he froze. His eyes skittered back.

_No_.

For some inexplicable reason, Sherlock suddenly couldn't breathe. It was as if something cold and sharp and paralyzing had pierced him through the chest.

_Oh, no. No no no no no no no…_

It was another jolt to realize what was happening to him. Disastrously, horrendously, impossibly, he couldn't _think_. His mind had stopped.

It _stopped_.

Sherlock had never come so close to panic before in his life. For a second, he _was_ panicking, powerless in his own reacting body. He simply sat, rigid, and stared down at the rear casing of the speaker device, feeling his blood grow colder and colder in his veins. A staring contest that he could never hope to win, considering that he was waging it against the unblinking eyes of a small, painted face. A smiley face, in fact. The exact replica of the one that he had painted on the sitting room wall back in the flat. Even the color was perfectly matched. For one long moment, he could only gape in horrified wonder at it.

Then the moment ended.

With a sort of snapping sound, his brain realigned on its tracks, blurring forward at such insane speeds that even he couldn't keep up with it. Snatching up his phone, he jammed in an oft-used number on his speed dial and slapped it to his ear. It rang once, and in that fraction of a second, his mind was a maelstrom. All that he'd learned, all that he'd thought in the past 48 hours, 23 minutes, and 37 seconds was brought out, stripped bare, and slammed together in new order so quickly that even he couldn't follow the process of it. That raging torment barely even slowed when the sound of the call being taken reached his ear.

"Ye—"

"Mycroft, shut up and find me a way to trace the source signal of a small transmitting device," Sherlock snapped into the phone, literally bouncing in his seat.

"Sherlock…"

"I said shut _up_, Mycroft!"

Sherlock didn't hear if his brother uttered any words of protest. His ears had just ceased working. It was all so strange. So _wrong_. He didn't know what was going on. He didn't understand what was happening to him. But he was certain of one thing.

_Moriarty_.

Somehow, he just _knew_ that the madman was responsible for the disturbing pictograph in the device—and therefore, the device itself, and its implantation in Hobbes' hall, and then Hobbes' whole case, indubitably Ms. Pilozzi's as well. But what was worse…what worse, he was sure of one thing further. One awful, unacceptable thing. And bar none, it was the worst thought that had ever entered his mind.

"He's got John. _John_, Mycroft. Moriarty's got _John_."

* * *

**A/N:**

**For those of you unfamiliar with the term 6/.6 vision: it is a way of expressing someone's visual acuity. The standard is 6/6 (or 20/20 if you're an American). 6/6 represents what a normal person can see at 6 meters (20/20 = what a normal person can see at 20 feet). Someone with 6/10 vision, then, could see what a normal person sees at 10 meters when they themselves were seeing at 6 meters from whatever they were looking at (20/40 = what a normal person sees at 40 feet, you see at 20). So when Sherlock says that he had 6/.6 vision (20/2) he is saying that at 6 meters away from something, he can see all the detail that someone normal standing .6 meters away can see. It is the equivalent of a hawk's vision—literally.**


	6. But When My Enemies Are Close

**NOTE: I've broken this chapter up into smaller pieces. I'll be inserting little snippets of Sherlock in between them eventually.**

**Hi all! I'm alive! ...Well, that might be debatable. But I'm still typing, however slowly. I truly do apologize for how long this took. There was a combination of life/guilt over being mean to John/writer's block attempting to thwart me. Oops. Drat. I promised myself that I wasn't going to make excuses. **

**To the story!**

**Oh, wait. First: **

**WARNINGS: implied torture, deaths (ugly ones), swearing. Someone please let me know if I need to change the rating of the story after this chapter (there are 3 parts). **

**Disclaimer: You know = I borrowed.**

**Lots of Love! Please enjoy-**

** ~Knyle B.**

* * *

The first thing John realized when he touched consciousness was that it was a hot, sharp-edged thing—one that he wanted no part of. Then the haze of his drug-induced sleep cleared further, and he remembered who he was, what he was recovering from, and what he was likely to wake up to—and the pain. He remembered the pain. Inescapable and malicious, he sensed it lurking in his body, waiting to ambush him when he shook off the fog in his head.

John flinched internally. He _really_ didn't like the pain. It was too…disheartening. Too vile. Too alien for him to know how to fight against it. And _that_ was the difficulty of it. As physical ailments went, he had hardly a scratch compared to what he had endured in the line of duty, and yet he'd never been in worse agony. The hurt wasn't the physical kind. He wasn't even sure that it was _mental_. It was just…worse.

Oh, and now he was turning into poetic milk toast. _Fantastic_. Growling inwardly, he refused to let his moaning, delusional thoughts keep him from making the final push into lucidity. He hadn't succumbed to any pain yet—he had no intention of starting. Pride had fractured, many of its pieces falling bloodily by the wayside, long before, but obstinacy was all but ingrained in his bones. Fiercely, John gripped his will tight and forced his body to rouse itself, knowing full well that taking his time in awakening would only invite trouble. Experience had taught him volumes.

The pain hit. Hard. Unfazed, John tucked his head and ran through the graveyard that his mind had become. The red-tainted mists parted in the face of his determination, and soon he was there at the threshold of between oblivion and choice. The run left him feeling years older. The pain was at his back, scratching and clawing, clamoring to drag him back into its midst. It would follow him to the portal, but no further. It couldn't reach him in in wakefulness. That was probably what made the next step the so hard every time. The torment tried to bite deepest into him just before he made his escape.

John shook it off where he could and took the step. Grimacing as the last talons were ripped out of him, he jolted as his eyes blinked open, surprised in spite of himself that he had managed the monstrous feat of waking once again. The jerking jarred his battered body, and John's breath hissed between his teeth in an unstoppable protest—for a moment. Then he allowed no more. It was no situation to show weakness, especially not for something so minor. He'd taken far worse without a sound. Chagrinned, John snapped his tenuous control back into place, slamming his emotions back under wraps and reminding his body that _he_, not his instincts, was in charge of determining its actions.

Drained by his own forcefulness, he blinked the bleariness out of his eyes and took in the immediate area. The flaking ceiling of the little room was waiting for his gaze, and he eyed it with dislike, recognizing what it meant. _Right_. _Well, still here, then_. He was still in the bedchamber. Still Moriarty's captive. John shied away from the flurry of tense emotions that the fact procured, remaining firmly in business mode. Out of habit, he tugged once on each arm and leg, reaffirming the presence of the bonds that he knew would be there. They always were when he woke up. He would either notice them or the pain from the injection in his neck first.

On that note, he wondered why he couldn't sense a new needle wound, but his mind wandered away from the question before he could seize it. He was still too muddled from his last sleeping dose to focus.

John wished he could sit up. He'd been able to a few times, but it wasn't enough to work the stiffness out of his back from lying still so long. Sometimes, in between the blackouts that he imposed on the soldier, Moriarty would cut him loose, let him move, just to enforce how helpless he was. Because moving didn't automatically equal moving freely. Not when dear old Jim was playing games. He had been toying with the doctor's sleep cycle—among other things—since John's first waking, bringing him in and out of artificially induced and ended sleeps with drugs, varying the length and changing his clothes each time to make time keeping impossible. It had skewed John's internal clock so successfully that he had no idea how long he was out or how much time had passed since his capture.

And that, as innocuous as it might seem, really meant trouble. Without knowing how long it had been, he didn't know when to expect anyone to miss him. He didn't know when to start hoping that someone would begin to _look_. He had no length of time to tell himself he could survive through, to use to set goals, or to use as an anchor. That, very effectively, cancelled his ability to cope. Most of it, anyway. He excused himself for the lapse more out of necessity than forgiveness; if he got any angrier, he'd lose his ability to think rationally. Besides, as he'd already told Sherlock, _everybody had bad days_.

His was just lasting an extraordinarily long time.

At least he still had his obstinacy. If he couldn't fixate on escaping his enemy, then the next best thing was making said enemy's life as hellish and unsatisfying as possible. It was a cause that John could embrace wholeheartedly. He made it his sole purpose to confound Moriarty's fun at all turns, refusing whenever he was able to show a response to any of the infinite attacks on his person and only following the bare minimum of the instructions given to him—only as much as he felt was safe for Sherlock. He didn't show fear, he didn't show anger, and whenever possible, he didn't show pain. Of course, that wasn't always possible, seeing as Moriarty's idea of fun was—_nope, not going there_. _Too early yet_.

It occurred to John that he had been lying on the bed untouched for several minutes. That was all but unheard of. Frowning, he bent his neck, suppressing the urge to groan when taut, sore muscles complained all the way down his spine. A quick survey of the room revealed that it was empty. The door was shut, the desk lamp was off, and the camera—the camera was off. _Off_? He stared in fascination at the hated object on its tripod, unsure of how what to make of it. Its little red light had been a constant presence for as long as he could remember. John didn't understand. It was Moriarty's greatest weapon against him. Why would the madman let him wake and leave it unused? And where was he?

Growing ever more bemused and wary, John swept the room with his gaze again, tugging against his ropes so that he could prop a little of his weight on his elbows. The protests that ran through his weary flesh were barely heard as he was once more met with an empty chamber. _What is going_—off in the distance, something loud and echoing fell with a crash, and John jumped, his back bouncing on the mattress. The adrenaline from the scare jogged his stumbling brain. The residual cloud scampered away rather than face it, and John's thoughts immediately set to racing. Something was different. Something important. Desperate to figure out what it was, he grasped after the facts, searching for meaning.

_All right, facts_:

There was a ruckus in the building. His room was empty. Moriarty was gone. The camera was off. He'd woken up on his own, without a dose administered to revive him. He could hear more disturbances filtering through the walls and doorway. John felt a small thrill race up and down his skin as he came to the inescapable conclusion.

_Someone's cocked up. _

_Someone's cocked up very, very badly_.

Not exactly a Sherlock-material process or conclusion, but it suited his purposes just fine.

For instance, it made him feel like he'd gotten a week's rest and a holiday rather than an indeterminate amount of time as the prisoner of a madman. Shot through with the sudden energy, John sat partway up with a grunt, holding his arms out awkwardly below and behind him to satisfy the ropes. A knife sat glittering on the desktop, but it was too far out of reach. That was rather the point, naturally. Let him see a means of escape without letting him take advantage of it. It had been…detrimental to his morale, to say the least, though he had never let on any visible sign. It cut at him, seeing it there and useless to him, in a way that the physical blade never could.

Small wonder that his captor had made a point of leaving it out the whole time.

John made himself look away, focusing on his ankles. If anything had managed to get to him, that goddamn knife probably had the second-best chance. Hell, it _still_ had fairly good odds. But John hadn't been filled with wild hope before. Though he was sure that Moriarty had seen through his grim façade to the agony beneath, that he had known exactly what sort of harm he had been causing, John knew for a fact what the man _hadn't_ seen: that there was a part of John Watson that no amount of psychological or physical torture had ever been able to eradicate.

His loyalty.

If there was one thing that John was made of, if there was one trait that he could define himself with, it would be fidelity. It wasn't a point of pride, a motto, or anything ghastly-foppish like that. By no means did he recite its value to himself at night or drill its worth into his skull growing up in the hopes that he might one day portray it. It was just…how he was. No matter what he did, no matter who he felt he was, John could never shake his inner imperative to take care of his own. His military service had only amplified that part of him, and though that didn't mean much, in the normal scheme of things, his current situation had ramped up the condition to about a hundred times its normal intensity. Only one thing was on his mind as he worked his legs, sawing the cord around his ankles against the sharp edges of the metal bed frame.

_Sherlock_.

Sherlock was out there, in London, in England, somewhere, and wondering where he was. It didn't matter if his four days were up or not. The man had a worse texting habit than a teenage girl, and John's silence would have likely caused him enough distress to provoke an investigation, if not an actual foray into Ireland.

_Or…maybe not_.

Maybe the tall, exclamation-point of a man was back at Baker Street, perfectly content, running around the city and living his life without a thought for the short, boring bloke that had been cleaning his messes and trailing along behind him for months.

_Maybe_—_but no_.

No, that was a line of thought that could be examined at another time. What was important was that Sherlock _might_ think that he needed John's presence, and _if_ he did, then John was going to make damn sure that the thin idiot stopped worrying before he did something stupid and got himself hurt. The rest could get sorted later.

The cord snapped, and he gasped at the spines of ragged pain shooting up his legs, falling back on the bed. He'd managed to free his legs and distract himself from the raw, bleeding reality of it while he did, but that left his arms to contend with. And _that_ would be a problem. John scanned his surroundings frantically, panting and blinking back the stinging threat in his eyes, and was startled by a muted staccato burst from outside his prison.

_Gunfire_.

Far off and brief, but he'd know it anywhere. He tensed automatically, discarding his search. There wasn't any more time to fabricate a fancy plan. There wasn't time for much of anything. Unerringly, he felt his eyes drawn to the knife once more, and he came to a quick resolution. A little more discomfort was worth it. He was always better at brute force anyway.

In a flash, he was curled up on his shoulders, bracing his bare feet against the wall's cool plaster. Pain seared through him, flashing out from his ribs, his back, his legs, the bruised arches of his feet—and he ignored it.

_Later. Deal with it later_.

Squeezing his eyes shut, John rose up on his hands, planting them in the mattress and holding himself so that he was crouched against the wall. A hard downward shove got him airborne enough to grab the top bar of the headrest, and then he coiled, body screaming, with a white-knuckle grip on the bedframe. Blackness and spots invaded his vision; he fought them down.

_L__ater_.

He had a few feet to cover first.

Before the trembling in his arms could transform into malleability, John exploded off of the wall, harnessing every aching muscle he had in one powerful extension. The bed screeched on the tile as it slid forward, skittering and sparking its way towards John's goal. The solder himself catapulted forward with it. Tumbling back over the headrest, John landed flat on his back with his arms outstretched, moaning. Good God, he hurt. But then his head lolled to the right, and a weary, humorless smile stretched across his lips. The corner of the desk greeted his sight. It was right next to his knee. He'd actually gotten the sodding bed to cross the eight feet between him and his liberation.

Now all he needed to do was remember how to get ahold of it. Glancing over his shaking lower half, he sighed and flexed his toes experimentally. And flinched. Yep. That hurt. A lot. _Ouch_. And there was enough shakiness layered beneath the pain to be a problem. Judging from the state of him, he'd been without water for over two days. Alone, that wouldn't amount to his current state of disrepair, but with the fun he'd been having…

_Oh, nonononono. Later_.

While the thought was being safely locked away, John tensed his body and lifted his leg, taking advantage of his preoccupation. The knife was cold against his toes; he had to keep himself from curling them around the soothing sensation before he was sure that he had the handle and not the blade. Then there was a bit of excruciating acrobatics that involved him getting his feet up over his head again, dropping his knees enough to press the knife against the cord holding his right wrist, and trying very, very hard not to whimper.

Thank God he'd kept himself in shape after discharge. A month out of training, and what he was attempting would have been impossible. It was _still_ probably impossible. Refusing to consider that likelihood, John squeezed his eyes shut, felt oddly giddy when nothing wet leaked out of them, and clenched his toes harder around the knife handle. His heart was dancing a merry merengue in his chest, missing half the steps and too adrenaline-drunk to care. The knife shifted between his toes, and the dance turned into a frightened, amputated dissonance.

_Oh, no_.

The knife. It was slipping. John couldn't fight the panic welling up in his chest. He could feel himself losing his grip, and he didn't know if he would be able to cut through the cord before he dropped it. If the knife fell on the floor, out of his reach… Eyes flying open in dismay, he jerked his head to the side, just catching sight of the blade winking up over his head before—_SNAP_. John gasped and carefully let the knife drop onto the pillow next to his hand. His arm was free. His legs flopped gratefully back onto the mattress, and he plucked up the knife in a more conventional hold, turning with a groan to release his other wrist. Then he sat up.

The world swam in front of him. Swaying, John braced himself gingerly with one hand, flinching as tingles and soreness resulted. He could barely see straight. _Oh, Hell_. That wouldn't do. He couldn't afford a recovery period. He had to get out. He had to get to Sherlock. How much time had he wasted already, just sitting there and thinking that? He would just have to ignore the dizziness. Fight it, deny it, humor it, whatever it took to get him out of that godforsaken room and into a situation that he could control.

It was high _bloody_ time that he started making a difference in what happened to him.

With those thoughts in mind, John moved again. Transferring the knife to his dominant side, he rid himself of the remaining ties around his wrists and ankles and swung his legs carefully over the side of the bed.

_Ow_.

Standing was a new lesson in willpower. He very nearly failed. Well, he did fail, at first. Staggering as his feet gave up on whining and simply ceased functioning, John fell to his knees straight off. He decided that that was all right, though, seeing as he needed to get his vest, shirt, and jacket out from under the edge of the bed anyway. Moriarty had kicked them there when he decided that John no longer needed them. That was right before—

_No._ _Later_.

A bit more forcefully than he had intended, John grabbed for his clothes. Once he'd retrieved them all, he took a moment to struggle into the vest, gave up on ever buttoning anything, and skipped the shirt in favor of his shooting jacket. He sighed as it settled over his shoulders. He'd missed that jacket. The room had been kept uncomfortably cold—probably by design. He didn't wear jumpers because he felt comfortable in the English weather. After Afghanistan, anything less than a desert made him feel chilled.

Of course Moriarty would know that.

_No! LATER_.

He debated searching for his socks, but the thought of letting anything unnecessary touch his poor feet was too repelling. He'd just have to hope there was no broken glass in his future. _Or_… As an afterthought, he cast about for his shoes, finding the comfortable black boots just were he'd seen Moriarty drop them. They weren't quite the normal fare for a dress shirt and slacks, but John was too practical and too set in his ways to give them up for a little reason like fashion. It was the same reasoning he used with his jumpers, he noted diffidently as he eased his bare feet into their familiar confines. Sherlock could tease all he wanted. John knew for a fact that he was the happiest—and warmest—of the two of them when it came to living in his own wardrobe.

…And once again, he was slipping into true idiocy. _Wonderful_. Refocusing on the boots, John cut off several more examples of stupidity that his brain was entertaining and quelled just as many sounds of protest as he handled the laces, closing his eyes and his mind against the pain. Then he stood. Slowly, yes, and leaning heavily on the edge of the desk, but he did it. And then he just stayed that way for a moment, reflecting on his victory. And the area of the room that it had brought him into. His choice of crutch brought him uncomfortably close to Moriarty's array of equipment. In particular, the proximity to the camera was unnerving. John eyed it hatefully, glaring with utter murder in his eyes at its short tripod and matte finish. As he looked, his eyes strayed to the ball peen hammer lying nearby.

When he picked the door lock with one of the tripod's hinge pins and left the room minutes later, the camera lay in smashed and sparking ruin behind him.

* * *

**A/N:**

**I am beginning to wonder if I am not actually a horrible, cruel person on the inside. I am so sorry, John!**

**Actually, what I meant to mention was that yes, some things were deliberately left vague in this chapter. I will attempt to explain them in the future. **

**Please let me know if this worked. I'm still not sure about how it turned out... Whether you liked or didn't, I would LOVE to hear about it.**

**Thank you so much for reading! I will try to get my next chapter up faster.**

**Take care,**

** ~Knyle B.**


	7. BWMEAC part 2

**Hi! I've posted this bit already, but I'm breaking a HUGE chapter down into wee ones. I'll be working on putting Sherlock in between them soon!**

**Disclaimer and Warnings still stand!**

**Thanks for reading,**

** ~Knyle B.**

* * *

Outside in the hallway, it was as if he'd stepped into another world. Beyond the drywall and tile of his room lay a world of shadows and metal and dank, dripping water. John spared it all a precursory glance as he waded in, ascertaining only that his death wasn't imminent before he moved past his surprise. He had other things to worry about. Other _people_ to worry about. Well, make that one person. Only. As in, very, very singular. Funnily enough, that word could apply in both of its meanings. Had he done that on purpose? _Christ_. Where was his mind _going_? John snapped back to the present.

The chaos of conflict had grown louder while he freed himself. Moving slowly down the dark, pipe-lined corridor that his door had opened up to, John kept close to the wall, every sense on alert for danger. Which he could hear in abundance, thanks to the regular shooting and shouting going on in the distance. More crashes and a few explosions reverberated in the wall that he was leaning on, spiking his adrenaline with every vibration. There was fighting going on, all right. Due to the mazelike nature of the building he was in, however, he couldn't pinpoint where it all was coming from.

All John could tell was that he was in a utilitarian byway, traipsing between a red light up ahead and utter blackness behind. It was likely underground, close to the building's boiler room, since he was having such a miserable time stepping over the multitude of pipes and cables underfoot, tripping and cursing and all the while trying to avoid knocking his head against the spider's web of metal hanging down at eye level.

_Brilliant_.

John limped along, thinking dourly to himself about the inconsiderate sods in charge of building villains' hideouts. There was never an easy way to get someplace. Vaguely, he realized that he was being grumpy about poor layout planning in the midst of a life-and-death situation. His whole body was humming with adrenaline and hurt and weakness, but for some reason his mind felt free to wander into some bizarre and useless realm of cantankerousness. John had never had such an issue before.

Sure, he responded oddly well to Sherlock's antics and had a higher tolerance for stress than most, but he'd always felt like his reactions were…sane. The monologue going on in his mind, though, the complete detachment from…from _reality_ that he felt…and then there were the repeated mental departures back in the room. For some reason, his ability to focus was severely impaired. He frowned. If that continued to be the case, it didn't bode well for his mental health.

Thus made wary, he put a stop to any and all extra cranial activity right away, devoting as much of his brain capacity as he could to reaching the red light ahead, which had grown nearer and nearer as he made his way forward. Rounding a corner, John saw that its source was a single, wire-enclosed red bulb. It was stationed over a heavy metal door, the complete opposite of the conventional wooden one that had been used to disguise his previous quarters. There was a large wheel in the center. No picking that lock. Shuffling over, he peered cautiously through the small, grated porthole in it, rising up on complaining tiptoes in order to see.

Light. And metal. And more dark, gray walls.

_Blech_.

But on the bright side, there were no guards. All he could really make out was a small landing, lit with bright white light from the left, with stairs leading upwards towards the source. Not much of an escape route—but at least it was empty. Someone had conveniently put a mirror in the far right corner, angled so that the whole stairway was shown up to its top landing. The stairs appeared to crest at the corner of another hallway up above, where regular ceiling panels illuminated the gray walls, augmented by large—

_Windows!_

Windows opened to the outside. He'd found a way out. Though already pounding, John's heart rate began to accelerate in anticipation. Relaxing back onto his feet with a grunt, he reached for the wheel of the door and prayed. Thankfully, it turned without a sound. He did have to put a good effort in, though. It had his whole frame screaming bloody murder by the time the mechanism gave. John ignored the pain and soldiered on. Only when the bolts shifted at last and the portal swung open did he let himself collapse sideways into the door frame, gasping and running his shaking hands over his damp face to clear his overlong bangs out of his eyes.

He needed a haircut. And a body with a lot less mileage on it.

_Good Lord, man, you're old_, he chided himself lightly. _If opening a door was so hard_…

With a note of dark amusement, he eyed said door and the stairs, which seemed to look smug and vengeful by turns. Those stairs were going to hurt. He didn't especially care at the moment, but he really hoped that he wouldn't meet any hostiles in the midst of escaping. A row with a live opponent probably wouldn't end well for him. He was having a hard enough time winning against inanimate objects. And intangible ones. …Time, for example. Sighing wearily, he ran a hand through his hair and pushed off from the wall.

All of a sudden, it occurred to him that he was clean shaven. And clean. He could even smell his own aftershave and soap on him.

_But how…? _

He certainly didn't recall having anything to do with it. Without meaning to, he took stock of his physical state. He'd shaven, cleaned his hurts, had access to bathroom facilities—but no. No, he hadn't. All of that had happened, but not by _his_ doing. None of it had occurred while he was awake. At least, not awake enough to remember anything.

_Oh, no._

John felt a sharp queasiness take hold of him. He was confronted with the fact that sometime between his cognizance and forced slumber, there was a whole lot of time that he couldn't account for.

A notion flitted by in his head, skating atop the chaos, and John seized it desperately. It wasn't quite the distraction that he'd hoped for, though. Focusing on it only made him overcome by the need to know what drug they had given him. An old college text of his had come to mind, specifically a small excerpt on sedatives. He was amazed he even remembered it.

_"Some kinds of sleeping agents can be manipulated to leave a victim in a sort of sleepwalking state, open to outside suggestion and completely tame."_

He'd hated that textbook. He'd never felt completely comfortable with that particular passage, either. Narcotics were a necessary evil in medicine, one that he'd probably like quite a lot if not for the extracurricular activities that they furnished. And he wasn't just talking about addictions. Certain drugs were a little too useful for criminals. Kidnappers, for example. And if Moriarty had access—of course he had access. If he had _used_ any of them…

_Oh, God._

Cursing faintly, John stumbled back into the red-lit corridor and was quietly sick, grateful that he had at least thought to hide behind an enormous column of conduits before he broke. Best not to lose your head without a bit of cover. But then, why the hell had he let himself lose it in the first place? The danger he was in pressed in on John again, and he shivered, jerking upright again.

Sod being clean.

Sod drugs.

Sod Moriarty.

Angrily, he swiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spun away, darting to the doorway and pausing only long enough to make sure that no one was waiting on the other side before slipping through. He took them two at a time, and he didn't slow his pace until he reached the third stair down.

He'd been right. The stairs were Hell. But he'd take the burning and screaming in his muscles over the anarchy threatening in his head any day.

Almost to the top of the stairs, he tried desperately to quiet his strained breathing in order to hear, covering his mouth with his hands as he eased up onto the second step. The world spun dizzyingly for a moment; he leaned against the wall and waited the lightheadedness out. Hunger was making a hole in his stomach. Just another addition to the litany of complaints running through his body's processing system. He ignored all the rest of them, too.

Three seconds later, no threats had made themselves known, so he peeked around the corner and emerged into the causeway. It stretched off in two directions, one in front of him, another to his right. Going to a window, he saw that he was on the ground floor of a huge factory building. The window looked out onto a dirty cement courtyard, enclosed almost completely by the building. The hallway that John stood in wrapped all the way around on the ground floor, opening the building up to the outside with its multitude of large windows. It was interrupted by a twenty foot gap across the way from him that provided a causeway from the courtyard to a parking lot and staging area outside of the rectangle.

Most of the firefight sounds came from there. John could see men engaged in full combat outside and in, but most of the havoc stretched outwards from that twenty foot gap and into the rest of the slowly-disintegrating factory.

Leaning in the shadow of the window frame to avoid detection, he ran his eyes over the many men. He didn't recognize any of the combatants, but he could discern the two sides. There were the thugs, a ragtag, motley crew of muscle and chains and guns, who outnumbered the black-clad, official-looking force about three to one. And then there were the less numerous, dark fighters.

The uneven numbers made the fight about fair, John surmised, as the gents in black were obviously military-trained and well-armed with shields, guns, clubs, and what he assumed was pepper spray. They were holding their own and then some, it looked like. Someone out there was also playing with explosives, though he couldn't determine for which side, and John flinched as a particularly large blast shook the entire campus and sent bits of ceiling tile floating down into his hair. He stepped back from the window. All things considered, he decided that it'd be better to find a way out that didn't include wading into the melee.

His choice was further cemented when the sound of running footsteps reached his ears. They were coming from down the hall to his right. Jolting, John whipped his head around, looking for a hiding place. All he could see was another stairwell to his left, but if he could find a closet of some sort—somebody fired a gun very, very close by. Abruptly deciding that a closet wasn't strictly necessary, John turned and sprinted for the stair door, slipping through and closing it swiftly behind him.

As he turned to do so, he glanced through the door's window and saw that his almost-discoverers were two black-clad men and three average gits, all of whom were busy chasing each other down the hallway. The thugs were in the lead, turning back periodically to fire at their pursuers, and the ops team was too concerned with finding cover and securing their target to look far ahead. None of them had any clue that he was there.

Feeling a bit better, John made sure that his new stairwell was empty and began a cautious, wincing ascent. His choices were either continue searching for a way to escape or hide—he chose to get out. Sure, hiding would be fine as long as he remained unnoticed as he had thus far, but a bolt-hole like the stairway with two possible entrances was hardly secure. As placid as most people thought him, John saw was no sense in sitting and waiting to be found. Forcing himself to take the stairs at a normal pace, he made it to the top and stepped carefully onto the landing, finding no attackers waiting.

_Good_.

That was good.

_I think_.

Recalling his recent history with cameras and opponents that preferred mind games over straightforwardness, he _really_ hoped that he wasn't walking into some sort of trap.

Still on edge, he opened the door into the next level of the building and entered the long, unlit hallway that awaited him. There were no doors except for one at the far end, which stood ajar. It was the only source of light for the whole expanse, and the effect was wholly uninviting. John closed the door carefully behind him.

_Well, at least there're no pipes_.

And the light was better than in it had been in the basement, too. As in the hallway, the color of illumination ahead was white and bright, making John suspect more windows. He walked towards it automatically. Time to get out.

The door swung gently when he approached it, perhaps in the breeze that John felt blowing over him. Or perhaps not. Mistrusting the obvious, he approached it slowly and quietly, absolutely ignoring how his limbs protested against the half-crouch that he'd sunk into. On the hinge side of the door, he checked through the crack and found no one waiting behind it. He _did_ catch a glimpse of a metal handrail and a vast expanse of space beyond it, which was echoed by the view he could see in the space by the door handle.

Deciding not to push the door wider, John slipped through the small divide—he'd lost more weight than he thought—and onto a narrow metal balcony. It ran the perimeter of the enormous room that he'd entered, the factory proper, ringed by windows up near the ceiling and a second balcony between them and the staring soldier. The ground floor was covered in equipment, some of it so monstrously tall that the need for a three-floor building was readily apparent.

John was about to turn back and look for a new way out when he heard voices. Male voices. He froze. They were muffled, echoing, indistinct, but he could have sworn—there they were again. Yes, he was sure he recognized at least one of them. Could it be Moriarty? Or the leader of the black fighters? Well, he wouldn't know _that_ voice. Unless it was Lestrade. Or Mycroft: black, mysterious enforcers did seem his style.

Hell, it could even be Sher—he _had_ to find out.

Checking about for anyone that might have seen him, John crouched behind a large bit of factory machinery and looked around it—only to find another gigantic pile of metal in the way.

Scowling, the soldier heaved himself up again and moved silently around the side, reaching the far right corner of the walkway. The voices were still going, still indiscernible, and still emerging from out of his sight line. Frustrated, John kept on, eyes roaming the area all around and above him as he progressed. He only heard two others in there with him, but if he could be silent, then so could someone else. The ruckus of the fighting going on outside only made it easier for footsteps that didn't belong to go undetected.

He supposed he shouldn't be complaining. With the amount of limping he was doing, he would have sounded like an elephant if not for the constant shouting, firing, and exploding getting done nearby.

About halfway down the longer side of the room, John passed a particularly fat box of machinery and found himself staring down into a clearing. Two figures stood below, much smaller for all the distance between them and his widening eyes.

Immediately, John sank down behind an electrical box mounted on the railings, glad that neither of the two conversationalists had thought to look up while he stood there gaping. He slumped against the box's casing. Inside his chest, a funny little tattoo was rapping against his ribcage, and it took him a moment to realize that it was his heart, trying vainly to jump out of his chest. All at once, he was filled with a fierce dichotomy of awful, paralyzing fear and a blissful, joyful relief, because he was happy, so happy, and so, so afraid—

What the _Hell_ was Sherlock doing?


	8. BWMEAC part 3

**This is part 3 of my previously posted chapter. I'm sorry if it's been confusing.**

**Please let me know what you think!**

***Disclaimers and warnings still hold!**

**Hugs,**

** ~Knyle B.**

* * *

John was having a hard time processing what was going on.

Granted, he knew a few things for certain:

He'd been captured. By Moriarty.

He'd been tortured. By Moriarty.

He'd quite possibly been mentally damaged—also by Moriarty.

He was in the process of escaping from Moriarty.

And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence telling him that the one person in the world that he should really be concerned about running into was _Moriarty_, there he was staring down at the man, and he didn't give a damn. He was too busy dealing with the shock of finding his flatmate back in the same room with him. And watching said flatmate have a conversation with his sadistic captor.

Because that's who it was, down on the ground floor. Sherlock: the owner of the voice that he'd recognized. He was standing there, right in front of John, tall and austere and pale and unbelievably _idiotic. _And he wasn't alone. The second voice, the man he was talking to…Moriarty. Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty were just standing there and talking, polite as you please, while elsewhere in the building John had been imprisoned, tortured, escaping…well, no, that wasn't right. Unable to help himself, John peeked around the box again while he recovered, gawping down at the belstaff-clad figure below. No. Sherlock wouldn't be down there if he knew that John was nearby, if he knew what John had gone through; the blond man's gut rebelled against the very idea.

_Sociopath my arse. Of course he's got a…_

Inexplicably, his mind stuttered and balked and gabbled in the midst of the sentence. Bemused, John stole an iota of his focus away from his surveillance to inspect it, but it had already recovered and sped by before he could really catch hold of it. He looked back to Sherlock. The man had to be there for _some_ reason… He went on musing while quietly, in the back of his mind, a little voice finished his jumbled thought for him without him ever noticing.

…_heart_.

John couldn't imagine why Sherlock was there. Not a case: Moriarty would have told him if he thought he had evidence that the detective was forgetting his dear blogger. Not for Mycroft: he had sworn off helping his brother ever again after The Woman's ridiculous games. So what, then? _Why_—how did he get there? Mindful of his flatmate's oft-repeated advice, John shut his eyes and tried to make himself _think_.

On an empirical note, Sherlock's customary dress shirt was covered up with the same kind of bullet-proof armor that the troops in black were wearing. John would have missed it if he didn't know the lines of Sherlock's belstaff by heart—but he did, so he hadn't, and it was enough of a connection for him to conclude that Sherlock had arrived with the crew in uniform, at about the time that the fighting had started.

If that was the case, then there was likely some sort of operation going on that John's interference could badly bungle. He would do best to remain out of sight and mind until he was sure of the situation, lest he ruin whatever objective Sherlock and his cohorts were after.

Satisfied with that plan, he started creeping around to the side of the electrical box, looking for a way to see without being seen. Unfortunately, with the question of "how" dealt with, his mind slipped sideways, slinking subversively towards his first aborted question, the one that he didn't especially want to examine. It was too dangerous, that question of "_why_." Asking it would lead to speculation, and John knew for a fact that he wouldn't be able to speculate without starting to hope—

_Gun_.

Searching desperately for a distraction once again, his mind had directed his eyes over the factory in a sweeping motion. The habitual act was reminiscent of days when there were just as many dangers overhead as underfoot—John automatically looked upwards, a twinge in his shoulder reminding him what the cost was for lack of vigilance. In an urban setting, it might seem inane, but he'd given up on arguing with instinct. It didn't matter how long he'd been out of action. He was still looking up. He was still looking for snipers.

And, for once, he'd found one.

The flash of glinting metal up above was brief, but enough. Instantly, John was up and running, a distant explosion rumbling in his ears and chest cavity. A totally serendipitous burst of cover noise. He didn't pause to feel grateful for it. There was a gunman overhead, on the balcony of the wall adjacent to the one he was running along. A sniper. A real, live sniper, not something out of his hallucinatory dreams or half-forgotten memories, but a man with a gun and intention to kill.

He wasn't wearing black. He wasn't using the same make of gun as the rest of Sherlock's allies. He was in jeans and a jacket, assembling a custom-made rifle. An air gun, it looked like.

In all his life, he'd only known one man who used and air gun for his kills. His name escaped him. The evidence of his exploits—what really mattered—did not. If it was the same killer on the balcony that John knew from his army days, then he could hardly describe the danger that the gunman presented. Even if it weren't the same man, a sniper was a sniper.

A _sniper_.

John was so afraid, he had to remind himself to breathe.

_But really_, John thought as he ran, _that's not even the worst of it_.

Because he was truthful enough with himself to admit that it _wasn't_ the presence of a sniper, the likes of which had stolen his career and vocation and self-image out from under him with a second's work, that made him run.

No, what terrified him was the sniper's most likely target. Sherlock. The killer could erase him, wipe all his blindingly bright intellect and erratic, life-changing personality right out of existence before John's eyes. And John wouldn't be able to do anything about it. The mere possibility of watching his friend die while he stood powerless was enough to—

_LATER_.

Next train of thought.

Out of all the possibilities, self-degradation leapt to the fore. An easy transition. Mentally, John smacked himself in the forehead as he ran. Of course. Of _course_ there would be snipers. He should have seen it coming. Moriarty had flaunted his preference for them back at the pool loudly enough. John just hoped that he ordered nothing louder. He chanced another glance upwards as he sprinted, ascertaining his new target's exact location. The timing would have to be perfect, if he were to get the upper hand. There was a ladder to the second story up ahead, situated in the corner straight ahead of him. If he could just make it before the shooter got into position… He caught another glimpse of a weapon gleaming. Whoever the sniper was, he or she was assembling a full rifle and tripod setup—almost finishing, actually.

_Hell_.

John ran faster.

His focus was fraying, and he fought it violently, narrowing in on his task ahead. But as much as he tried, he couldn't shake the image of Sherlock standing below, completely absorbed in his nemesis, his back obliviously turned to the sniper's position…a sitting duck. Unless the skinny git suddenly developed survival instincts and quit the building, John was his only chance of leaving that factory alive. John cursed and poured on more speed, leaping the first three rungs of the ladder as soon as he got near enough.

He was climbing before both feet had fully settled on their resting places, and he didn't even have to think about shutting out the pain. With the rest of him occupied with something as important as somebody holding a bloody gun on Sherlock Holmes, it simply didn't register. Only one thing was important: stopping the bullet destined to head in his flatmate's direction. Preferably _before_ it was discharged.

John's shoulders cleared the next floor, and he fairly leaped up off of the ladder, landing in a low, crouching run that carried him silently closer to his goal. He was hidden from the men below by a row of switchboards mounted on the railings; a large, droning conduit stood between him and his quarry. Its bulky personage blocked the sniper's view of him. Better yet, the continuous humming from within it was drowning out any vibrations that his footsteps made. It wouldn't work if the shooter decided to get down on his belly, but if he hurried, he wouldn't have to worry about that. The man was crouching, intent on finishing his work and not on alert.

_Off his game_.

John could topple him over and get him in a sleeper hold…he paused next to the conduit, peering around the edge.

The man's broad back was to him. He was big, bigger than John by a good ten inches all around. But he was down on his toes, leaning over. Unbalanced. John vacillated between his natural caution and the impulse to act surging through him. He could wait for the man to get down all the way, where John would have more leverage. That would only happen when the gun was ready, though. Too risky. No, if John was going to take him, it would have to be as he was or not at all. It was as good a chance as he was ever going to get. He eyed the rifle, and then the intense, thin, black-clad figure down below.

Why was he still waiting? Sherlock would be dead by the time he lifted a finger, at that rate.

John leapt.

The surprise of his attack was what saved him. He got an arm around the other man's throat before the bigger bloke even knew he was coming. That was about all he was able to do. Holding on to the muscle-bound giant—why was he always fighting people bigger than him?—holding onto the sniper was almost more than he could handle. The man was a cat under fire—claws, devil eyes, and more damned grace than any human had a right to have. It was all John could do to make his battered arms hold tight. The sniper tried to shake him off. They fell over the tripod and upset the gun, which was just fine by John's reckoning. The minor victory was forgotten shortly, however, as he was hard pressed to keep pressure on his hold.

John grimaced as various metal edges dug into his skin. His opponent bucked and rolled tirelessly, testing the farthest limits of his human choke-collar. If it came down to a fight of endurance, John knew that he would unquestionably lose. He had to neutralize his enemy before that happened. And be quiet about it. The sleeper hold was keeping the sniper from calling out, but if they made enough noise, Moriarty would catch on. If he hadn't already. Hopefully Sherlock was at his most distracting, although that would seem like far too lucky a break.

John's focus was diverted from such wishful thinking when his quarry reached for his belt. _Knife_, he thought automatically, rolling so that he lay on his back with the sniper's enormous frame on top of him. The weight was unpleasant, but the position freed his leg and let him put more pressure on the man's throat. A swift kick later, a small blade was skittering across the balcony floor, and the sniper was finally struggling for air. John grunted as foreign elbows bruised—he heard a muted snapping sound—as foreign elbows _fractured_ his ribs, deftly dodging the back of a fair-haired skull that tried to smash his nose in.

Why was it taking so long? Thus far, the sniper was outlasting any and all of the sleeper hold victims that John had either seen or heard of. Distantly, he heard unhinged, maniacal laughter. Moriarty was happy about something. _Ugh_. Swallowing bile, the soldier blocked out the noise and pressed his forearm more snugly under the sniper's chin. Just a little while longer. Just a few more bruises, a few more moments of combatting the other man's struggles…

_Uh-oh_.

He was slipping.

_Nonono_.

John fought desperately against the trembling in his arms. _Oh, not now_. Another thing, turned against him.

_Fucking wonderful_.

Automatically, John could feel himself getting angry. He couldn't afford to fight two opponents at once. So he locked the weakness out, banning it mercilessly from keeping a presence inside him.

The sniper wasn't making his job any easier. His arms were everywhere, and it seemed like John was disarming him of another knife or pipe or garrote every other second. He felt himself overtaken by a grudging admiration for the show of preparedness and tenacity. The man would just _not_ pass out. Catching that thought, he amended it quickly, _he hasn't passed out_ yet. He would. John would see to it, whether or not it was easy. The alternative was snapping the would-be killer's neck, and though John wouldn't hesitate to do it, he didn't think that either of them would like it very much. Their silent wrestling match went on, and he counted the seconds in his head, calculating when the lack of oxygen would finally work in his favor.

Thirty-nine…

Forty…

Forty-one…

As abruptly as he had responded to John's initial attack, the sniper went limp in John's arms. Surprised, the soldier loosened his hold by a fraction, allowing breath to surge into his victim's lungs but keeping tense in case it was a trick to make him release his hold. He waited five seconds. Nothing. Carefully, he unclasped his left arm and pressed two fingers to the man's jugular, finding a strong, steady pulse throbbing under his touch. Alive, then. _Well, good. Sort of_. Grunting, John shoved the man's deadweight off of him and rolled sideways, ending on his stomach and elbows, peering down over the edge of the balcony. One of the sniper's knives—the third, he thought—poked him in the elbow next to the skewed tripod. He ignored it.

Moriarty was staring up at him, his dark, mad gaze waiting to meet John's the moment that the soldier looked down. _Oh, no_. Hoarfrost gathered in John's extremities. Unwillingly and instantly, he was captured by that black void; the iciness wasted no time in poisoning his bloodstream, rushing through his veins to assault his heart. Fear. It clouded his thoughts, overwhelming him so suddenly and so completely that there was nothing John could do about it. Moriarty's black eyes were everywhere, everything. He had learned to hate that gaze, to cringe away from all the Hell that it brought with it.

But he couldn't afford to do that any longer, could he? He wasn't a captive anymore. He had to stop acting like one, even if seeing Moriarty still made him feel like the walls were closing in on him.

_Oh, for_—

John cursed Moriarty to a number of unmentionable places in the back of his head. And himself. One look shared between them, and he was undone. Where had his resilience gone? Already, he could feel himself crashing. All the adrenaline, all the energy, all of the drive that had kept him going was being drained by the fear. He was paralyzed, goddammit.

And Moriarty knew it. Even as Sherlock stiffened, beginning to turn, to search for what had taken the lunatic's attention away from him, Moriarty was starting to smile. To grin in that awful, sadistic, heartless way that he always did when he had John cornered and they both knew it. When he had won.

_Not Good_.

Adrenaline spiked right along with John's instincts as he grabbed the knife and rolled to the side. He knew full well not to trust that look. A crowbar crashed down on the balcony where his head had been moments before, and he took it as a sign that his suspicions had been well founded. The sniper was up. And out for blood. John rolled again as a booted foot swung his way, scrambling up onto his feet and ducking another swing from the crowbar. A punch broke his fractured ribs, and he gasped and struck out with the knife in response, staggering out of range. He'd hit something, at least. Probably. His arm throbbed. Had he cut _himself_? He ran a quick systems check. Elbow was twisted, not bleeding. Blood slicked down the blade and over his fingers. Not his.

_Yep. Got him_.

He blinked and dodged again.

The knife felt cold and heavy in his hand. He tried to focus on using it the way he wanted to, but it was all going too fast. There was too much distance between them. There was too much bloodlust in his enemy's eyes. He couldn't get the bigger man in another hold, and even if he did, he doubted that the killer would let the conflict end with both of them alive. The sniper was crouching, snarling up at him from behind a fringe of fair blond hair with eyes as pale and white-blue as ice. He would have been handsome, if his face wasn't so twisted by pain and hate. John's eyes flickered down, to the much more pertinent threat of the man's hands. His right arm was held close to his side, failing epically to stem the blood seeping out below his ribs, and his left fist clenched the crowbar so tight that his nails were cutting into his palms.

Seeing the mess, John flicked into doctor mode, diagnosing, judging his handiwork with detached efficiency. The wound in his side was fatal. The other man didn't have long. Still, whatever seconds he had left would be more than enough to toss a damaged little ex-soldier over the railing. John tensed as the other man hefted the crowbar again, getting ready to turn back one final attack. It wasn't going to be easy. His legs were on the verge of collapse, and his one free hand was attached to a twisted elbow. The railing pressed cold and hard into his back. He grimaced, considering his scanty options. He couldn't dodge forever, he couldn't punch or kick, and last he checked, he couldn't fly. There really only one way left for him to make sure that he left that balcony alive.

_Right. The knife, then_.

John exhaled and fell into a loose-limbed, ready stance. With a plan of action, he was a steady as a rock. In control. Deadly. But still, as ever, he seemed innocuous. Seeing only an exhausted, injured man with blood on his shirt and a knife in his grasp, his opponent was dangerously unaware of his resolution. With an inarticulate growl, he charged, swinging the crowbar with both bloody hands.

It was the most obvious action for a man in his position to make. Becoming enraged had made him predictable. Ever patient, John let him come, coiled and watching. Only when the enraged specter of death had almost reached him did he move. One sidestep did the trick. He cleared the danger zone a millisecond before the crowbar sliced the air where his head had just been. The blow would have killed him, if it landed.

_"If"_ being the operative word.

John noted grimly that the sniper had swung too hard. If he'd kept his head, he might have corrected himself, but no. He was falling. He'd made his first major blunder—and his last. John felt a distant sort of sympathy as he shifted his grip on the weapon in his fingers, raising his arms to strike. In a perfect world, one little miscalculation wouldn't mean so much. Human error seemed far too common to be the determiner of who lived and who…didn't. After all, _everybody had bad days_. But the world was far from perfect; John had a bullet hole to prove it. Good or bad, there was really only one way to survive in life: make the least mistakes. As his attacker overbalanced, John watched a set of scales tip in his favor in his mind's eye.

_Check.._.

Stepping forward once again, he slapped the sniper's arms neatly out of the way, swept the crowbar out of his grasp in the same motion, and sheathed the knife in the man's eye socket.

_…and mate_.

It was over for the sniper in less than a second. Instant death. _More than a lot of people could hope for_. Breathing out hard, John stepped back and let inertia take its course. The corpse made no sound as it was catapulted over the edge by its own momentum and fell into the open air. John watched it fall, dropping his red hands to his sides. A tiny stopwatch in the back of his mind, started when he first saw Moriarty smile, ground to a halt. Three seconds. Three seconds was all it took for him to fight for his life, get his ribs broken, stab a man in the eye, and for a body to fall down two stories to the—_thud_.

Four seconds.

_Well. So that happened_.

John didn't wince at the broken sight below, transferring his attention instead to the two living figures on the floor. He'd killed a man. For Sherlock. Again. A quick internal search confirmed what he already knew: no regrets. There was nothing else he could have done, and it was no longer important, anyway. Sherlock was staring up at him, a look of mixed surprise, confusion, and—and something else that didn't seem to fit with John's natural expectations of him.

Immediately as their eyes locked, something unidentifiable relaxed in John's chest. And something else fluttered. His eyes immediately travelled over Sherlock's entire personage, just as he knew Sherlock's were travelling over him, making sure that he was unhurt, that he hadn't lost too much weight, that Moriarty hadn't—but no, he Sherlock was fine.

He was absolutely fine.

_Thank God_, John breathed inwardly, his shoulders slumping in relief.

Five seconds.

_Wait, what?_

He hadn't been worrying that much, had he? His brow furrowing, John looked away. It was a lot harder than he'd expected it to be. The first thing that his gaze strayed to was the body. The soldier in him eyed it analytically.

_Not a threat: not relevant_.

He blinked and shifted focus again…to Moriarty_. _

_Oh. Moriarty_.

He tensed, watching the leering little man with open hostility. _There_ was a very big, very relevant threat indeed. He was staring down at the body of his sniper even as Sherlock was gaping up at John. Unlike the detective, however, Moriarty expressed neither surprise, confusion, nor…nor pleasure. Instead, his face was steadily darkening, twisting into an awful, ugly mask of fury, hatred, disappointment, and childlike petulance.

Madness.

John had learned to recognize the sickness well enough. He knew it by name and face, and it made him feel cold, seeing its cruel, unpredictable countenance so close to his flatmate's unsuspecting back. Moriarty snarled down at the bleeding corpse that had once been his favorite toy, and then in a quick, reptilian oscillation, he turned all of the vindictive rage in his person upon John. His eyes were pure hatred. Loathing. Fury. Darkness. Insanity. All of it, crashing towards him. Without thinking, the soldier stumbled back a step, his heel catching on the edge of the rifle stock and nearly sending him tumbling. He had learned to hate that look. And fear it. The past consequences of it were all too fresh in his mind, reminders radiating out from every aching bone in his body.

Six seconds.

Still staring up at him, Sherlock saw him falter and began to turn, to redirect his attention back to his own safety at last. Even as he did, though, John knew something was wrong. As John's focus had been shattering in the face of Moriarty's glare, the criminal mastermind had been moving, doing something with his arm. Reaching into his coat pocket. Did he have a weapon? John's heart stuttered in its mile-a-minute race. Of _course_ he had a weapon. Sherlock had remembered the presence of his enemy too late.

They were _both_ going to be too late.

Moriarty's hand cleared the edge of a perfectly-tailored hem, and a small glint of silver winked in the sunlight.

Sherlock froze mid-turn.

_Gun_, John thought, and dove for the rifle.

He wasn't sure if it was an observation or command to himself. He wasn't sure giggle he heard from below was real or part of his carefully twisted imagination. He wasn't sure of _anything_, least of all what he felt crack and scatter deep inside him when the laughter continued to ring in his ears long after he'd snatched up the air gun and put a bullet through Moriarty's chest, a perfect shot from a midair roll. John didn't know what to think.

He'd _thought_ that his heart might have stopped when his eyes finally focused on the view through the rifle scope and found Moriarty's insane glee there waiting for him, untouched by the gushing redness spilling forth from his left pectoral. But he wasn't sure. He'd _thought_ that his head might have split open, just a little, when he realized that the man wasn't laughing, that the mirth he heard so clearly in his ears could not be coming from between those bared, leering teeth. But he wasn't sure. He'd _thought_ that it wasn't humanly possible for a man to take a direct shot to his heart and remain standing for three full seconds thereafter, smiling fanatically up at his shooter and seemingly unaffected by the lead eviscerating his insides. And suddenly, John realized that, in all the world, there was really only one thing that he was sure of anymore.

Some people truly didn't have hearts.

Reality rushed back into John's head in a tidal wave. Without another second's hesitation, he bent his head back down to the scope, re-aiming the rifle in a seamless motion. Target. Trigger. Boom. Setting the rifle carefully aside, John picked himself up off of his belly and strode back towards the ladder, leaving the blood and death behind him. The laughter ceased as he stepped onto the first rung, and there was nothing that came after it to fill the peaceful void that it left. John welcomed the nothingness. Sherlock rushed to meet him as he descended, calm and purposeful, down a second ladder to the ground level.

As the soldier's feet touched the floor, he heard Sherlock's running steps halt behind him. He turned, unhurried, and met his next challenge. His flatmate stood waiting, still and staring and silent. He didn't know what to say. John didn't either. His eyes, so alert before, felt slow and heavy. Looking at Sherlock, he began to feel a tiny itch in his impassivity, the smallest imperfection that threatened to compromise his entire safe, detached cocoon.

_No. _

No, he _couldn't_ face that. Not yet. Composed and empty, he let his weary eyes fall where they would, away from the piercing gray beacons boring into him. Down they went, bringing his distance with them, down to the ground, past Sherlock's tense shoulder, out into the space beyond the balconies' shadow. They fell on a pair of lifeless corpses, lying side by side. His handiwork: a man killed with a knife, and a monster silenced with a bullet between its wide, glaring eyes. John took the sight in with a curious lack of emotion.

Everyone had bad days.

* * *

**A/N:**

**There. Done. It's all back up now. Hopefully, that wasn't too maddening for you.**

**As always, pleasepleaseplease tell me what you think, and thank you so much for reading!**

**Au Revoir! (no, I'm not actually French.)**

** ~Knyle B.**


End file.
